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The Trump era has produced a surplus of provocative and irresistible questions about American life for the chattering class to clamor over. The latest came in the form of an NYU experiment that used actors to recreate presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton exactly as they happened, with one adjustment - their genders were swapped.

The intention, as explained by one NYU professor, was to confirm the "liberal assumption" that "no one would have accepted Trump's behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate."

For most of the presidential campaign, liberals, including Barack Obama, tossed around that assumption as though it were an unimpeachable fact. When the Left-leaning experimenters at NYU put it to the test, however, their results contradicted it completely.

According to NYU professor Joe Salvatore, "People across the board were surprised that their expectations about what they were going to experience were upended." A New York Times reporter explained, "Most of the people there had watched the debates assuming that Ms. Clinton couldn't lose. This time they watched trying to figure out how Mr. Trump could have won."

To many performance-goers, the female Trump was likable, while the male Clinton was not.

For spectators of American politics, these results provide much material for digestion. At first blush, disentangling reactions to the experiment feels almost overwhelmingly complicated. But does it have to be that way?

Maybe it's simple. When you analyze everything through the prism of identity politics, your vision is clouded.

Because of the dominant perception that Clinton was unlikable, liberal supporters saw her as a victim of persistent sexism. When they experienced a man using her same words and embodying her same mannerisms, they saw the unlikability. If you remove the lens of presumed sexism, you see what everyone else sees.

Similarly, the Left complained that Trump's masculinity allowed him to get away with bluster and pomposity. But the female Trump in NYU's experiment got away with that same behavior just fine.

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Because liberals' standard package of presumptions about gender colored their perceptions of both candidates, they were left incapable of making accurate evaluations.

Truthfully, this experiment seems more like a lesson in how assumptions about gender impede our ability to understand reality, rather than inform it.

In an email to the Washington Examiner, American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers mused, "I'm not so sure this NYU play is a lesson about gender but about authenticity."

Sommers, an expert in gender and feminism who did not support Trump, assessed the results by explaining, "Mr. Trump whatever his failings spoke his mind. He was spontaneous, uncensored and funny. Tom Wolfe called him a 'lovable megalomaniac.' Ms. Clinton came off as scripted, focus-grouped, and supercilious."

"That's hard to love in either sex," Sommers concluded.

Also from the Washington Examiner

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Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

Original post:
Liberals discover the limits of Clinton's likability - Washington Examiner

Washington Times

See no evil: Liberals refuse to see themselves as hypocrites Washington Times For too long, the liberal left has been hiding behind a guise of compassion and inclusivity. They claim to care about the forgotten man and pretend to have tolerance for people of all backgrounds, races, religions and political beliefs. Yet, time and ... 3 cops, pepper spray used in arrest of Sen. Tim Kaine's son near Trump rally at CapitolTwinCities.com-Pioneer Press Sen. Tim Kaine's son among several arrested after protesters disrupt Trump rally in MinnesotaWashington Post all 166 news articles »

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See no evil: Liberals refuse to see themselves as hypocrites - Washington Times

The progressive mob that disrupted Charles Murrays appearance last week at Middlebury College was protesting a 1994 book read by few if any of the protesters. Some of them denounced eugenics, thereby demonstrating an interesting ignorance: Eugenics controlled breeding to improve the heritable traits of human beings was a progressive cause.

In The Bell Curve, Murray, a social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, and his co-author, Harvard University psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein, found worrisome evidence that American society was becoming cognitively stratified, with an increasingly affluent cognitive elite and a deteriorating quality of life for people at the bottom end of the cognitive ability distribution. They examined the consensus that, controlling for socioeconomic status and possible IQ test bias, cognitive ability is somewhat heritable, the black/white differential had narrowed and millions of blacks have higher IQs than millions of whites. The authors were resolutely agnostic concerning the roles of genes and the social environment. They said that even if there developed unequivocal evidence that genetics are part of the story, there would be no reason to treat individuals differently or to permit government regulation of procreation.

[Why Middleburys violent response to Charles Murray reminded me of the Little Rock Nine]

Middleburys mob was probably as ignorant of this as of the following: Between 1875 and 1925, when eugenics had many advocates, not all advocates were progressives but advocates were disproportionately progressives because eugenics coincided with progressivisms premises and agenda.

Progressives rejected the Founders natural-rights doctrine and conception of freedom. Progressives said freedom is not the natural capacity of individuals whose rights preexist government. Rather, freedom is something achieved, at different rates and to different degrees, by different races. Racialism was then seeking scientific validation, and Darwinian science had given rise to social Darwinism belief in the ascendance of the fittest in the ranking of races. The progressive theologian Walter Rauschenbusch argued that with modern science we can intelligently mold and guide the evolution in which we take part.

Progressivisms concept of freedom as something merely latent, and not equally latent, in human beings dictated rethinking the purpose and scope of government. Princeton University scholar Thomas C. Leonard, in his 2016 book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era, says progressives believed that scientific experts should be in societys saddle, determining the human hierarchy and appropriate social policies, including eugenics.

Economist Richard T. Ely, a founder of the American Economic Association and whose students at Johns Hopkins University included Woodrow Wilson, said God works through the state, which must be stern and not squeamish. Charles Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin, epicenter of intellectual progressivism, said: We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation. Progress, said Ely, then at Wisconsin, depended on recognizing that there are certain human beings who are absolutely unfit, and should be prevented from a continuation of their kind. The mentally and physically disabled were deemed defectives.

In 1902, when Wilson became Princetons president, the final volume of his A History of the American People contrasted the sturdy stocks of the north of Europe with Southern and Eastern Europeans who had neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence. In 1907, Indiana became the first of more than 30 states to enact forcible sterilization laws. In 1911, now-Gov. Wilson signed New Jerseys, which applied to the hopelessly defective and criminal classes. In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginias law, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. writing in a letter that, in affirming the law requiring the sterilization of imbeciles, he was getting near to the first principle of real reform.

At the urging of Robert Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association, during World War I the Army did intelligence testing of conscripts so that the nation could inventory its human stock as it does livestock. The Armys findings influenced Congresss postwar immigration restrictions and national quotas. Carl Brigham, a Princeton psychologist, said the Armys data demonstrated the intellectual superiority of our Nordic group over the Mediterranean, Alpine and Negro groups.

Progressives derided the Founders as unscientific for deriving natural rights from what progressives considered the fiction of a fixed human nature. But they asserted that races had fixed and importantly different natures calling for different social policies. Progressives resolved this contradiction when, like most Americans, they eschewed racialism the belief that the races are tidily distinct, each created independent of all others, each with fixed traits and capacities. Middleburys turbulent progressives should read Leonards book. After they have read Murrays.

Read more from George F. Wills archive or follow him on Facebook.

Continued here:
The liberals who loved eugenics - Washington Post

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

The president (almost) never apologizes.

I'm sorry, but this may upset some of you.

I have happened, you see, on research that chose to examine whether your political leanings make you more prone to apologies.

This research may have been stimulated by our sorry political times.

Indeed, Matthew Hornsey, from Australia's University of Queensland, told PsyPost on Tuesday: "My thinking on that had been influenced by casual observation of politics -- it just seemed that people on the left side of politics would issue public apologies more than conservatives."

Ah, but public apologies are different from, say, sincere apologies. They can be strategic, rather than real.

Science hasn't yet delved deeply enough into apologies. Studies have often focused on whether an apology exists, rather than how effective it might have been in achieving forgiveness or even rebuilding a little trust.

For an apology to be effective, one 2011 study concluded that you have to convince the other person that it won't happen again. Can anyone believe that from a politician?

Another study suggested that when you apologize matters too. It can be too late. In this 2013 study, a conversation of less than 10 minutes can tolerate a later apology. A longer conversation requires a much quicker "sorry."

Hornsey, whose study was first published in January, admitted to being fascinated that President Donald Trump, while campaigning, insisted he never apologized. Which, surprisingly, turned out not to be true.

The study looked at 2,130 people in seven countries -- Australia, Chile, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Peru and, look here, Russia.

It involved subjects writing down what they would say in situations that may have required an apology. The researchers concluded that not only are conservatives less prone to apology, but also less moved by someone else's apology.

Hornsey tried to offer initial explanations. It seems that conservatives are more hierarchical and accept power difference more readily. So if I hurt someone lower than me, ach, that's the way of the world.

Hornsey, though, says he'd like to go deeper into into examining whether conservatives simply see apologies as a sign of weakness.

"I also wonder if conservatives have a higher threshold for what they see to be offensive," he added.

I fear some conservatives may look at this and conclude that liberals are soft little things who pussyfoot around in their political correctness and bathe in apologizing for America.

I fear some liberals may retort that conservatives have neither decency nor self-awareness and are emotionally Neanderthal.

I fear we're may all be feeling very sorry if we carry on like this.

Technically Incorrect: Bringing you a fresh and irreverent take on tech.

Tech Enabled: CNET chronicles tech's role in providing new kinds of accessibility.

Originally posted here:
Liberals apologize more than conservatives, study says - CNET

A 26-year-old high school teacher has defeatedformer provincial cabinet minister Yolande James for the Liberal nomination in the riding of Saint-Laurent.

Emmanuella Lambropoulos beat both Jamesand law professor Marwah Rizqy Wednesday night to secure the nomination.

Lambropoulos and her team couldn't hold back their surprise at winning out overJames, the woman considered to be the Liberal party favourite. She said her victorywas the result of a lot of hard work.

"I really went every day, door-to-door, with one or two other people. We worked really hard,"Lambropoulostold Radio-Canada.

Leading up to the vote the media didn't pay much attention to her candidacy, she said,and often, people didn't even know there was a third candidate running.

James was reportedly approached by the party to run and served as provincial immigration minister between 2007-2010 under former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

She had also recently worked as a commentator on CBC and Radio-Canada.

James didn't speak to reporters following the announcement, but sent a tweet congratulating Lambropoulos. She ended up finishing in third.

Lambropoulos teaches in Montreal's Rosemont neighbourhood and has worked for the Saint-Laurent riding association.

Her supporters credited the fact she lives in the Saint-Laurent borough and wasn't parachuted in by the Liberal party as the main reason she came away with the victory.

Emmanuella Lambropoulos reacts after winning the nomination. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)

"We came from the bottom up,"said Petro Vouloukos, 22, who helped Lambropoulos secure her win. "We were the grassroots. Not from the top up like Mrs. James."

The Saint-Laurent riding has been Liberal for decades and is considered a safe seat for the party in the April 3 byelection.The seat was left empty whenStphane Dionaccepted the role ofambassador to the EU and Germany.

Lambropoulos was the only of the three candidates to live in the riding.

Second place was Rizqy, a tax lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in another Montreal riding in the 2015 federal election.

The race has been the subject ofcontroversy, as long-serving St-Laurent borough mayorAlan DeSousawas blocked from seeking the nomination by the party without explanation.

His appeal of the decision was unsuccessful.

A Liberal member at Wednesday's votewho has lived in the riding for 13 years,Bilal Hamideh, told CBC it was unfortunate DeSousa was not allowed to run.

"In general, I think it's discouraging to participate in the [nomination]system," Hamidehsaid.

"It does weaken the system in a way if it is not clearly explained why he wasn'tallowed.

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Surprise winner Emmanuella Lambropoulos secures Liberal nomination for Saint-Laurent - CBC.ca