#Hillsdale College

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey at ProPublica:

ProPublica and Documented obtained more than 14 hours of never-before-published videos from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which are intended to train the next conservative administration’s political appointees “to be ready on day one.” Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation and its allies for a future conservative presidential administration, has lost its director. In recent weeks, it faced scathing criticism from both Democratic groups and former President Donald Trump, whose campaign has tried to distance itself from the effort. But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy remains on track. Video trainings like these are one of the “four pillars” of that plan, says Spencer Chretien, the associate director of Project 2025, in “Political Appointees & The Federal Workforce.” For transparency, we are publishing the videos as we obtained them.

The Heritage Foundation and most of the people who appear in the videos cited in this story did not respond to ProPublica’s repeated requests for comment. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said, “As our campaign leadership and President Trump have repeatedly stated, Agenda 47 is the only official policy agenda from our campaign.”

ProPublica and Documented partner up to reveal 14+ hours’ worth of never-before-published videos from The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Presidential Administration Academy.

[serpentinesheldonserpentine]

Learn sumthin’. I dare you!

If you’ve been bored lately, why not click away from TikTok and learn something new or refresh your knowledge of an old favorite? Maybe take a class with a friend?

Before I restarted my formal education I took some free courses from Hillsdale College. They were so darn good I was motivated to go back to school full time. Yep. At my age. And yes, that does take a big set of balls. Moving on.

You? Yes, in the back. Before you raise your hand and object, I cheerfully acknowledge that Hillsdale College has a decidedly conservative philosophy.

So what?

How ya going spin the history of classical music or chemistry?

You can’t.

So get over yourself. View life as a buffet: a few courses from Hillsdale, a couple from the Young Commies Guild, pretty soon your life is fun and full.

[irreplaceable-spark]

Woke Capitalism Against America | Vivek Ramaswamy

[exprimis]

The author's bio is a treat:

Charles S. Faddis served for 20 years as an operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, including as a department chief at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and as a chief of station in the Middle East. He earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his J.D. from the University of Maryland Law School. He is the author of several books, including Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security and Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

I wonder what he identifies as the failures of the CIA? Let's see:

The CIA had no sources inside Al Qaeda to tell us about the 9/11 plot.

The CIA didn't immediately attribute COVID-19, known to be descended from bat-borne coronaviruses, to the bat coronavirus gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab.

Bureaucracy and a risk-averse culture.

Loss of skills, but also loss of mystique: "The people who run our government [...] have done their best to turn the CIA into just another federal agency. [...] We act as if anyone can be taught to conduct espionage—as if this is no longer an arcane craft to be practiced by a select group of unique people."

"The CIA has proved unable to put a source inside a Chinese bio lab, within the leadership structure of the Taliban, or next to Vladimir Putin."

The CIA has been politicized: backing Hillary Clinton in the Benghazi inquiries, aiding the Trump dossier investigation, and former intelligence officers decrying the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian propaganda.

The first point is transparently false; read the 9/11 Report and you will learn that the CIA had "real-time intelligence" on Bin Laden as early as 1996, with a plan to capture the known terrorist financier in place by the fall of 1997. That Bin Laden was planning to hijack civilian airliners was known as early as 1998.

The second point is still a matter of contention.

The third point is true of every part of government, but is especially true in international politics, geez.

The fourth point makes Charles Faddis sound like he's been reading too many spy novels where there's no risk of war from getting found out.

The fifth point is false as to Al Qaeda and laughable as to Putin. And if the CIA had any assets in Wuhan, their existence would be so totally classified that the CIA would hesitate to use their information in public, because the CIA prefers to not have its spies tortured and executed.

The sixth point reads like the seething cope of a man whose ideology is opposed by the Deep State, whether or not his facts are right. It is incredibly ironic that he complains that the CIA, which historically reported only to the President, was a political tool of the presidential administration of a Democrat.

So what does he identify as solutions?

Fire a lot of people.

"Recruiting must be completely revamped. Quotas are absurd. Focusing on color, gender, and sexual orientation is at best irrelevant. We want the best, and that means those people who possess the unique blend of skills and abilities that enable them to do what everyone else considers impossible."

Make training tougher.

Flatten the org chart and make it all about ops, not about analysis or support.

... for a man complaining that the CIA wasn't able to put spies in specific locations, he seems awfully invested in removing the ability of the CIA to recruit people who will blend in in those locations due to their color, gender, and sexual orientation.

[huntingforsehnsucht]

[historyofguns]

The article "Hillsdale College Dominates USPSA Collegiate Championship" by Scott Wagner, published on The Armory Life, details the impressive achievements of the Hillsdale College Action Shooting Team. The team recently demonstrated their prowess by securing top finishes at the inaugural United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) Collegiate Championship held at Hillsdale's John A. Halter Shooting Sports Education Center, following their consecutive national wins in the Scholastic Action Shooting Program in 2022 and 2023. Notable team members including Taylor Chen, Kayla Mullin, and Clara Bozzay excelled in individual divisions, contributing to the team's overall success. The event, sponsored primarily by Springfield Armory, featured diverse competitors and a unique match structure that fostered camaraderie and shared expertise among participants from various institutions such as the United States Naval Academy, Clemson University, and Michigan State University. The article emphasizes the strong institutional support for the Hillsdale shooting program and highlights the significance of their state-of-the-art facilities funded through private donations. It celebrates the remarkable achievements of the team under the guidance of Head Coach Adam Burlew and highlights the harmonious blend of competition and sportsmanship displayed throughout the event.

[prcg]

DC envía boleta destinada a otro votante a un residente de Michigan

Un vicepresidente de Hillsdale College encontró una boleta de voto ausente en su buzón de Michigan. Pero procedía de Washington, DC y estaba dirigida a alguien que probablemente nunca vivió allí. “No tenemos ninguna razón para creer que alguien con ese nombre haya vivido alguna vez en este lugar”, dijo Robert Norton, vicepresidente y asesor legal de Hillsdale, a The Federalist. Norton encontró la…

[hoppynsc]

"The American Left" by Hillsdale College

Another superb lecture series, this time following the evolution of the far left and how they have influenced American politics. Kevin Slack gives a superb series of lectures on the history of the far left, showing how the term 'liberal' morphed from being about freedom to big government, and even their recent rejection of free speech. A fantastic history lesson, as usual, from Hillsdale.

[wutbju]

The 21st-century KKK is starting their own public charter school in the Charleston, South Carolina area. Every female on the Board of Directors is a member of the white supremacist Moms for Liberty.

Who needs Bob Jones University when you can infiltrate the public sphere with your Klandamentalism, yes?

[thecoddiwomplist]

Slayton Arboretum, Hillsdale Michigan

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Audrey McCabe at MMFA:

As Project 2025 maps out its conservative agenda for the next GOP presidential administration, several of its partner organizations have employed figures involved in efforts to overturn former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss — and others have already begun sowing distrust in American elections ahead of the 2024 presidential election. 

Led by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 lays out staffing and policy priorities for Trump’s potential return to the White House. The project has over 100 partners, ranging from extreme anti-LGBTQ groups to prominent conservative think tanks, many of which have employed individuals directly involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including figures who served as Trump’s “fake electors”; urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to delay the certification of the electoral count; and pushed disputed legal theories to keep Trump in power. Right-wing media have platformed these individuals, championing their schemes and validating their election lies.  Other partners have turned their sights to the 2024 election, spreading doubts about its legitimacy months before it occurs under the guise of concerns about “election integrity.” Despite lacking evidence of systematic issues across American elections, some of these Project 2025 partner organizations baselessly suggest to their supporters that the 2024 election is being “rigged” as part of “a concerted effort by Democrats,” setting the stage for Trump and his media allies to once again contest the legitimacy of November’s results.

Project 2025's partners are using right-wing media outlets to pump out election denialist propaganda with the intention of sowing distrust in the election process.

[janicecampbell]

It's Time to Rediscover the Power of Poetry by Ellen Condict

It’s Time to Rediscover the Power of Poetry Memorizing it has become a lost art in the age of the iPhone, but it can still awaken us to a deeper understanding of our world.   by Dr. Ellen Condict   In a world that seems increasingly disturbing and even violent, we desperately need an antidote for our despair. We need a daily dose of beauty, and Pinterest and Instagram won’t suffice. We need…

[johnnusz]

This is incredible and something MUST be done before the works as we know it stops.PERIOD!

[exprimis]

Christopher Rufo is a known transphobe, but I read this essay in Hillsdale's Imprimis, adapted from a speech that Rufo gave, and burst into laughter.

The essay contains many serious issues, including:

Uses trans people's post-transition names, but misgenders them in the most amazing ways: "[so-and-so] now identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. [...] She works as...."

Talks about "the transgender movement" as if it was something that only started in the late 1980s

Says that the transgender activists are trying to use transgenderism to support a Marxist revolution, and then does not try to split this gender-political coalition, thereby ceding ground to his ideological opponents

Discusses percentage-based demographic statistics without talking about population sizes

Hypothalamus-produced hormones are effectively the divine spark which grants life and humanity

Describes the evils of minimally-invasive robot surgery

There are also some things which I applaud this essay for:

Discusses MTF, FTM, and non-binary perspectives

Liberally quotes trans and non-binary writers

Provides the first mainstream citation for "nullification" surgery that I've yet seen

But that's not the funny part.

The funny part is Rufo's analysis of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

In [Susan] Stryker’s best-known essay, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” he contends that the “transsexual body” is a “technological construction” that represents a war against Western society. “I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster,” Stryker writes. And this monster, he continues, is destined to channel its “rage and revenge” against the “naturalized heterosexual order”; against ���‘traditional family values’”; and against the “hegemonic oppression” of nature itself. [...]

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote the famous novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The premise of the book is that modern science, stripped from the constraints of ethics and nature, will end up creating monsters. “Trans-affirming” doctors are the post-modern version of the book’s protagonist, Doctor Frankenstein. [...] Jennifer Pritzker, Maureen Connolly, Blair Peters, and their ilk occupy the heights of power and prestige, but like Doctor Frankenstein they will not be able to escape the consequences of what they have created. They are condemning legions of children to a lifetime of sorrows and medical necessities, all based on dubious postmodern theories that do not meet the standard of Hippocrates’ injunction in his work Of the Epidemics: “First, do no harm.” Although individuals can be nullified, nature cannot. No matter how advanced trans pharmaceuticals and surgeries become, the biological reality of man and woman cannot be abolished; the natural limitations of God’s Creation cannot be transcended. The attempt to do so will elicit the same heartbreak and alienation captured in the final scene of Mary Shelley’s novel: the hulking monster, shunned by society and betrayed by his father, filled with despair and drifting off into the ice floes—a symbol of the consequence of Promethean hubris.

Did Rufo even read Frankenstein? The tragedy did not come from the creation of The Creature, who Dr. Frankenstein and society shunned because of his looks. The tragedy was engendered by social rejection, and by physical attacks upon The Creature. It was this violence that led The Creature to swear revenge on Frankenstein and humanity, not some quirk of monstrous morality.

If Rufo wants to avoid the tragedies brought by shunning and rejection, instead of demonizing trans people and their sculptors, he should advocate for acceptance of ugliness, and for improvements in surgical technique to avoid that rejection.

[prcg]

Por qué Trump necesita que Elon Musk despida a miles de burócratas

Antes del debate vicepresidencial del martes, el Comité Nacional Demócrata colocó un cartel afuera del Madison Square Garden llamando al compañero de fórmula de Donald Trump, el senador JD Vance, “el chico del cartel del Proyecto 2025”. Como lo predijeron los correos electrónicos de la campaña, durante el debate el compañero de fórmula de Kamala Harris, el gobernador Tim Walz, nombre verificado…