Author: Bill Vallicella
Hillary Clinton
The Czech Canary in the Cultural Coal Mine
A reader who grew up under Czech communism, but who now lives in the US:
Hi Rod,
A thought about comments like this one:
“Creating an equivalence between a poster in an American high school promoting understanding, with imagery that can be misunderstood, and Hungarian terrorism, is a huge disrespect to Hungarian terrorism. There is no equivalence”
and many other similar ones …
What your readers do not understand is that horrors of communism did not start with people planning to murder and torture. They started with “posters in … schools promoting understanding, justice, equality”, with starry-eyed people wanting to address societal ills. It was this social reengineering that eventually and inevitably led to murder and torture.
Keep your eyes wide open. People like the Czech reader are canaries in the coal mine.
On the other hand, I keep having a slightly unnerving experience here, both in Hungary and the Czech Republic. People cannot understand the insanity coming from America, the UK, and the EU on LGBT and gender theory. It is literally incomprehensible to them. Just this morning I was talking to a seminary professor of moral theology who said that his thesis on alternative sexualities was laughed at; his colleagues could not believe that anyone would take this stuff seriously. This professor is no advocate for alternative sexualities, but he had lived and taught in the West, and he knows they are going to have to be dealing with this stuff here sooner or later.
I keep telling the people I talk to about this that they should not simply laugh this stuff off as incomprehensible. Several agreed with me that 40 years of communism served as a vaccination against susceptibility to ideological extremism, and that this might be why even atheists (most Czechs are atheists) find the gender theory types to be crackpots. But then, if you had told a lot of Americans in 1998 what would be mainstream in our country on this front in 2018, they would have laughed like the Czechs and the Hungarians laughed. But now look.
From Peralta to First Water: A Tribute to Lloyd Glaus
This morning I received the news that my neighbor and fellow hiker Lloyd Glaus had died. What follows is a redacted entry from an earlier pre-Typepad version of this weblog in which I reported on a memorable trans-Superstition hike we took together over ten years ago, on 29 October 2007, when Lloyd was 75 years old and I was 57.
………………..
How long can we keep it up?
I mean the running, the biking, the hiking and backpacking? Asking myself this question I look to my elders: how do they fare at their advanced ages? Does the will to remain fit and strong pave a way? For some it does. Having made the acquaintance of a wild and crazy 75-year-old who ran his first marathon recently in the Swiss Alps, uphill all the way, the start being Kleine Scheidegg at the base of the awesome Eiger Nordwand, the North Wall of the Eiger, I invited him to a little stroll in the Superstitions, there to put him under my amateur gerontological microscope. Lloyd's wife Annie dropped us off at the Peralta Trailhead in the dark just before first light and we started up the rocky trail toward Fremont Saddle.
Eight and a half hours later she kindly collected us at First Water, the temperature having risen to 95 degrees. Lloyd acquitted himself well, though the climb from Boulder Basin to Parker Pass left him tuckered. And he got cut up something fierce when we lost the trail and had to bushwack through catclaw and other nasty flora.
But he proved what I wanted proven, namely, that at 75 one can go for a grueling hike though rugged country in high heat and still have a good time and be eager to begin planning the next trip. Some shots follow. Click to enlarge. Weaver's Needle, the most prominent landmark in the Superstition Range and visible from all corners of the wilderness, but especially well from Fremont Saddle, our first rest stop, is featured in several of them.
This is how I will remember Lloyd, and this is how I suspect he would want to be remembered — with his boots on in the mountains.
Tribute to Lloyd Glaus
Sick of Politics?
Then I invite you into the serene precincts of Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
The Rachel Dolezal of American Politics
You say you've forgotten who Dolezal is is? Too much Twitter! A weapon of mass distraction. Soon you'll be a tweeting twit with a mind fit only to flit.
Related:
Rachel Dolezal, The Black White Woman. I make a mistake at the end of this post that I will now correct. I represent Elizabeth Warren as the author of Pow Wow Chow when in fact she is merely a contributor to that by-now-famous recipe book. Her contribution, however, a recipe for lobster bisque — Cherokees were into haute cuisine? — was plagiarized!
Dolezal, Knowledge, and Belief
And while we are on the topic of Dem femmes, Hillary still doesn't get it. More here.
Related articles
A Mark of Intelligence
One mark of intelligence is the ability to recognize intelligence in others and ignorance in oneself.
Four Notes on the Gun Debate for the Reasonable
This post has a prerequisite: a modicum of rationality and a little bit of good will. The irrational and ill-willed should head for their 'safe spaces' now lest they be 'triggered.'
1) Is anybody against gun control? Not that I am aware of. Everybody wants there to be some laws regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, transportation, use, etc., of guns. So why do liberals routinely characterize conservatives as against gun control? Because they are mendacious. It is for the same reason that they label conservatives as anti-government and anti-immigrant. Conservatives stand for limited government, whence it follows that that are for government. This is a simple inference that even a liberal should be able to process. So why do liberals call conservatives anti-government? Because they are mendacious: they are not interested in civil debate, but in winning at all costs by any means. With respect to both government and gun control, the question is not whether but how much and what kind.
Similarly with immigration. Conservatives do not oppose immigration; they oppose illegal immigration.
2) Terminology matters. 'Magazine' is the correct term for what is popularly called a clip. Don't refer to a round as a bullet. The bullet is the projectile. Don't call a suppressor a 'silencer.' Is your name Hillary? Avoid emotive phraseology if you are interested in serious discussion. 'Assault weapon' has no clear meaning and is emotive to boot. Do you mean semi-automatic long gun? Then say that. Don't confuse 'semi-automatic' with 'fully automatic.' The 'AR' in 'AR-15' is not short for 'assault rifle.' Bone up on the terminology if you want to be taken seriously.
A stupid article in the Washington Post calls what I have just written 'gunsplaining.' To be 'gunsplained' is to be "harangued with the pedantry of the more-credible-than-thou firearms owner, admonished that your inferior knowledge of guns and their nomenclature puts an asterisk next to your opinion on gun control."
What nonsense! Only a fool dismisses essential distinctions as pedantry. And if one is not willing to learn the elementary terminology of a debate, then one should not presume to enter the debate. One who does not understand such terms as abortifacient, embryo, gamete, and viable should not enter the abortion debate, for example.
3) Gun lobbies benefit gun manufacturers. No doubt. But they also defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens, all citizens. Be fair. Don't adduce the first fact while ignoring the second. And don't call the NRA a special interest group. A group that defends free speech defends a right of all citizens, including those who do not invoke the right. Every citizen has an actual or potential interest in self-defense and the means thereto. It's a general interest. A liberal who has no interest in self-defense and the means thereto is simply a liberal who has yet to be mugged or raped or had her home invaded. Such a liberal's interest is yet potential. When Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, many foolish liberals thought that a fascist was about to enter the White House. Many of these liberals suddenly began taking the Second Amendment seriously.
4) Question for liberals: what is your plan in case of a home invasion? Call 9-1-1? What is your plan in case of a fire? Call the Fire Department? Not a bad thought. But before they arrive it would help to have a home fire extinguisher at the ready. Ergo, etc.
Can you follow this reasoning? If not, you need help. Please seek it for your own good.
Why Do Asian Americans Continue to Support Liberal Candidates and Policies?
One might think that, given the superior intelligence of Jews and Asians as groups, members of these groups would not support destructive leftists when it is fairly obvious that doing so is not in their long-term best self-interest. We read below that a third of Asian Americans live in California. So they have first-hand experience of the negative consequences of leftist government. So why do they vote Democrat overwhelmingly?
It turns out that Confucius plays a role! Ideas have consequences.
An Asian American documents the fact and then offers an explanation (emphases added):
From Roosevelt’s executive order which sent Japanese Americans to internment camps during the World War II to today’s affirmative action in college admissions, Asian Americans have been hurt again and again by Democrat politicians and liberal policies. Yet Asian Americans consistently vote overwhelmingly for Democrat candidates. In 2016, 79 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters supported Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In the 2012, presidential election, Barack Obama won 73 percent of the Asian American vote, exceeding his support among Hispanics (71 percent) and women (55 percent).
Why do the majority of Asian Americans choose to support Democrats? I identified three factors. First is location. Asians tend to concentrate in urban environments where liberals are dominant. For example, a third of Asians in America live in California. Other top states with significant Asian populations are New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii. Therefore, Asians are bombarded by Democrat propaganda.
Second, the cultural influence of the countries of origin still has an impact on many first generation Asian immigrants: the top six countries that send 80 percent of all Asian immigrants to the U.S. are China, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. With the exception of India, the other five countries all have long traditions of being patriarchal societies following Confucian teachings. Confucius, a Chinese philosopher from 551 B.C to 479 B.C., defined the relationship between government and its people, between the ruler and his subject, as a family affair. Confucius believed people should obey and respect their rulers just as they obey and respect their fathers, while a ruler should love and care for his subjects as if they were his children. Under the influence of this philosophy, although many Asians believe self-reliance and hard work are the only paths to prosperity, many of them also believe government has a responsibility to take care of other people, and they are more open to big government as long as there is a virtuous leader to lead it. Like many other ethnic groups, the second generation of East Asians are much less likely to be subject to the influence of Confucius.
Third, the Democrat’s message of embracing diversity, as superficial as it is, still sounds attractive to many Asians, because it gives them a sense of belonging. In the meantime, Republicans have all but given up on winning Asian votes and thus make very little effort. Republicans have been doing a very poor job of “showing up” in Asian communities. To many Republicans candidates, minority outreach means outreach to African Americans and Hispanic Americans only. Outreach to Asians has a lower priority, often merely showing up at a Chinese New Year celebration in an election year is considered to be sufficient. In addition, Republicans do a poor job of recruiting Asian Americans at the grassroots level. Being an Asian and a conservative is a lonely journey. When I show up at a Republican Party event, 9 out of 10 times I am the only Asian in the room.
David P. Goldman on Condoleeza Rice
Here:
Should we assume that every people in every land is equally capable of shaping its own destiny? The notion that largely tribal Muslim societies can march to democracy on the same path as Americans who elected their own pastors and collected their own taxes has caused endless mischief. Time and again, Rice’s prescription comes down to “assume a civil society,” where none ever has existed.
[. . .]
Culture doesn’t matter for Condoleezza Rice, who reduces the world to simple ideological categories. Her contribution to misguided American policies has been substantial. America hasn’t begun to pay for the consequences of her mistakes. The Bush Administration and its successor spent over $4 trillion to build nations in Iraq and Afghanistan, with nearly 7,000 American dead and more than 50,000 wounded. What do we have to show for it?
Culture matters. This is why a nation has a right to defend and preserve its culture by enforcing its borders and by refusing to allow subversive elements to immigrate.
We are not all the same whether as individuals or as groups. We don't share the same values or want the same things. Not all cultures are equally conducive to human flourishing.
John Locke on the Right to Self-Defense
Let's go through the drill one more time.
You have a natural right to life. This right to life entails in others a moral obligation not to harm you. Should anyone attempt to do so, you yourself have a right, directly and not via the invocation of the help of a police agency, to defend your life. But if so, then you have a right to the adequate means of self-defense. Having the right entails the right, though not the obligation, to exercise the right. This implies that the law-abiding citizen has a right to keep and bear appropriate arms for personal and home defense.
It follows that no one and no government has the right to infringe your gun rights.
Much more could be said, but as some wit once observed, and then kept repeating, "Brevity is the soul of blog."
Now what about this right to self-defense? If you were to deny that we possess it, I would pronounce you benighted and not worth ten seconds of a rational man's time. But it is always nice to be able to back up one's assertions by invocation of the views of great philosophers. So we turn to John Locke (1632-1704), a great influence on our Founding Fathers, and The Second Treatise of Government (1690). Chapter III is entitled "Of the State of War." The first paragraph, #16, is as follows:
Sec. 16. THE state of war is a state of enmity and destruction: and therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but a sedate settled design upon another man’s life, puts him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so has exposed his life to the other’s power to be taken away by him, or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power [emphasis added].
Double Indemnity, 1944
I took a welcome break from the cable shout shows and the gun 'conversation' the other night to watch the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson. The Stanwyck character talks an insurance agent played by MacMurray into murdering her husband in order to collect on a double indemnity policy.
The husband is strangled mafia-style, murderer in back seat, victim in front. But the act is not shown. The viewer is shown enough to 'get the picture.' These old films had sex and violence but one's nose wasn't rubbed in them. Sex and violence were part of the story line. If Bogie was shown taking the leading lady into a bedroom, one knew what was about to transpire, but one was spared the raw hydraulics of it.
But thanks to 'progressives' we've made 'progress.' Much of what passes as 'entertainment' today is meant to demean, dehumanize, degrade, and undermine whatever moral sense is left in people. I leave it to you to decide whether Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook . . . Parkland and like atrocities are more appropriately charged to the account of liberal culture rather than to that of gun culture.
You know my answer.
We ought to demand of Hollywood dreckmeisters that they clean up their act and curtail their cultural pollution. Not that these scumbags would ever show any social responsibility.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Bob Luman
Robert Glynn Luman (15 April 1937 – 27 December 1978) was an American country and rockabilly singer–songwriter. (Wikipedia)
He is best known for his 1960 crossover hit that made it to the #7 spot on the Billboard Hot 100, Let's Think About Living. How quaint the reference to the fellow with the switchblade knife. It was a tamer time.
Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache
The Bard's version
The Gun. Great period photos.
Gene Vincent's version
And of course Merle Haggard's. "He who travels fastest goes alone."
More satisfying to my mind and ear is Jean Shepard's version. I first heard it in 1965 in Joan Baez's rendition on her Farewell Angelina album.
Hollywood’s and the Left’s Fascination with Freaks
The denizens of HollyWeird love the freakish, the 'transgressive,' the grotesque, and the unnatural. And being leftists, they celebrate losers and screw-ups, from the legendary La La Land 'motorist' Rodney King to the shotgun murderer Tookie Williams. A characteristic of libs and lefties is that in their typical knee-jerk (reflexive as opposed to reflective) style, they take the side of losers, criminals, screw-ups and underdogs regardless of what they did to bring on their underdog status. If you don't understand this, you will never understand the Left and how pernicious leftists are.
Don't get me wrong. I believe in equal justice under the law. And I believe in helping those who, through no fault of their own, have fallen on hard times. I practice what I preach. But the attitude of leftists whereby they celebrate transgressives and miscreants is perverse, which is why these destructivos deserve our steadfast opposition and unremitting contempt.
Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you what I really think. For now, I pass the baton to Gilbert T. Sewall:
Hollywood’s A-list is almost all in for transformative social justice, which mixes calculated groupthink and “can I grab the spotlight?” As a result, America’s favorite Hollywood evening has mutated into hours of glossy political hectoring, this year in behalf of female empowerment, support for immigrants, and opposition to the National Rifle Association.
“Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion,” Harvey Weinstein declared in 2009. “We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe.” With telethons and global hugs, who needs nature or God?
[. . .]
Hollywood likes freakish [freakishness], and so do its devotees. Criticizing tattoos, hookups, rap music, or trannies — saying the wrong thing on Facebook — might get you into trouble at work or school. Heaven forbid you should offend those who would consider your disapproval “hatred,” which entitles them to destroy your career or good name. Or maybe blow you away.
We’re getting used to that as well. First-person shooter video and computer games allow people to enact murder, not only watch it. That’s part of Hollywood’s multimedia platform too, a franchise worth billions.
Media accountants and publicists raise the specter of censorship and the thought police on their way to the bank. In fact, entertainment capitalists have no illusions what they are stirring up and the thrills they provide. New York- and Los Angeles-based wizards know how to stimulate appetites and points of view, and for a price they can do their magic in Washington, D.C. Privately, they exalt [exult] in their power.
Meanwhile, Hollywood doubles down on identity politics. It insists that depravity and imaginary violence do not lead to sociopathic behavior. It professes the product is mere fiction, that it has no real world effect. If you don’t like it, look the other way. You don’t have to buy it.
Lust
Ugly in a man, lust is uglier in a woman.