Good for the goose, not for the gander?

This headline is an old Southern saying about hypocrisy.

The sort of hypocrisy that the woke powers that be of Harvard University demonstrate, as discussed in this posting by Peter Klein, a professor at Baylor University (as quoted by Tom Woods recently):

An AP story on the Trump-Harvard standoff states falsely that: “Trump’s administration has normalized the extraordinary step of withholding federal money to pressure major academic institutions to comply with the president’s political agenda and to influence campus policy.”

This is exactly what the 2011 and 2024 “Dear Colleague” letters from the Obama and Biden administrations accomplished by threatening to withhold federal funding unless schools complied with a novel interpretation of Title IX in which students accused of sexual misconduct would be convicted by a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard without the right to confront the accuser and offer evidence to challenge the allegation. This was to pressure institutions to comply with the president’s political agenda.

Put simply: the parasite called Harvard University is claiming that Trump is no different from past occupiers of 1600 PA Avenue NW. While stating the lie that he is doing something “extraordinary” (different).

We here at TPOL do not disagree: Trump’s regime has 95% in common with the past dozen or so presidential administrations. Most of that in common being bad or even evil, in our opinion.

And we disagree with them all: to put it simply, NO university, NO school, NO educational facility should get a single penny of FedGov money (stolen or not). Such money (those payments) are NOT authorized by the Constitution. The state and schools should be as separate from each other as the state and churches, or the state and selling food, for that matter. And no just because that authority is not given to the FedGov in the US Constitution, but because it is an incredibly bad idea and leads directly to tyranny and totalitarian government.

But the point of today’s commentary is not about Harvard’s funding – but about its attitude. And those of the Woke and Tranzis – and far, far too many people who claim to be “conservative” and even some minarchists – who believe that Trump is more evil, more dangerous than his predecessors in the White House when they did exactly the same thing. And those who believe that the Federal (or State or local) government should have any role whatsoever in educating children. Or for that matter, adults.

Harvard now, though theoretically a “private” university, is in essence a parasite on government (and therefore taxpayers). Despite its vast wealth, it sucks up billions of dollars. Dollars stolen either from American taxpayers in the past and today, or from the future. Yet it thinks that it is not subject even to the few controls the Constitution and public opinion put on government agencies!

This is not just hypocritical, it is highly arrogant. And toxic in so many ways to society and to culture. It is no different than the arrogance and hazard that state-controlled (or state-allied) religious organizations were (and are) to nations throughout history. Harvard is not alone in this, of course. There are many of the Ivy League schools that are equally hazards.

And the relationship that lets Harvard think it can get away with this is not new – and not established by Obummer or Uncle Joe. Or the Clintons or Bushes. It has developed over decades – indeed a century or more. As regressive European ideas (and ideals) of government-run, theft-funded education were adopted (starting as long ago as Abraham Lincoln: Uncle Abe’s proto-Progressive regime did much evil), Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth – and the State-owned schools (such as Princeton and Cornell and UPenn) – see themselves as the elite and essential to American greatness and the power of the FedGov. And therefore, “deserve” the vast sums squandered on them. Even while they charge their students tens of thousands of dollars a semester for the privilege of attending them and getting indoctrinated into their anti-freedom, anti-liberty ideas.

Why? Because we let them. Because we either believe them or let them get away with their lies, their attitudes, and their claims.

An afterword: we do not agree with all that The Donald is demanding as the price of giving government funds to Harvard and all these other places. It is indeed no different except for those people and ideas targeted than what the old parties and their officeholders have done for a long time. And no less bad. Just for the record.

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