Quotes of the Day

From Ace of Spades HQ:

Quote of the Day III

It's impossible to get decent Chinese takeout in China, Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba, and that's all you need to know about communism.

-- PJ O'Rourke

Quote of the Day IV

Here are young women with more opportunities, more liberties than almost any women in history and at that moment we tell them they're short-changed silenced victims of a patriarchy? It's defeatist and demoralising.

-- Christina Hoff Summers

Quote of the Day V

If I were in charge of that school I'd round up every student that signed that petition and force them to go to a seminar titled "Attending College and Being an Adult: Sometimes Learning Means Being Exposed to Ideas You Don't Like." That seems like a more productive use of the university's time than deciding which ideas are too dangerous for the ears of their precious, whiny, crybaby wards.

-- Sonny Bunch on Wesleyan University students demanding that the school paper 'provide a safe space' for readers

Triggers and Triggering

From Ace of Spades:

Lately, there has been some kind of social movement in the direction of taking no responsibility whatsoever for one's emotions: a total hand off, and it's done openly and without a hint of recognition an individual might actually be responsible for his or her own feelings. It seems people have come to accept this is the new normal.

The movement appears to be attached to latest iteration of feminism, third-wave feminism, and it has worked its way from college campuses into popular culture. The constant refrain from those who have no responsibility for their feelings is "trigger" and "triggering." Triggering is when someone does or says something that "causes" another's negative emotions, and a trigger is a particular word or act that "causes" negative emotions. And apparently anything can be a trigger. Christina Hoff Sommers recently triggered many people simply by making a speech at Oberlin College, for example. Those who had no responsibility for their emotions were forced to create "safe rooms" where they could seek reassurance from others who had no responsibility for their emotions.

Ed Dricoll at PJ Media write further about this issue with his aptly named article,"Trigger Warning! College Kids Will Soon Discover ‘The Adult World Is Not One Big, Extra-Cushy Couch’."

Well yes, when you make the cossetted boomer generation look like rugged individualists

Ouch!