Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

The ACLU and Mardi Gras

Fat Tuesday, coming as it does the day before Ash Wednesday, derives its very meaning from the beginning of Lent. The idea is to get some serious partying under one's belt just before the forty-day ascetic run-up to Easter. So one might think the ACLU would wish to lodge a protest against a celebration so religious in inspiration. Good (contemptible?) lefties that they are, they are ever crusading against religion. Perhaps 'crusade' (L. crux, crucis) is not the right word suggestive as it is of the cross and Christianity; perhaps 'jihad' would be better especially since many loons of the Left are curiously and conveniently ignorant of the threat of militant Islam and much prefer going after truly dangerous outfits like the Boy Scouts.

The schizoid Left: anti-religious in general, but not when it comes to religion's most virulent subspecies, the fanatic fundamentalism of the Islamo-head-chopper-offers.

If you are going to take umbrage at the creation of a Catholic town as the ACLU shysters did, why tolerate Mardi Gras? Why tolerate a celebration which originated in a Catholic town for a purpose that is obviously tied to religion? Is it inconsistency, or is it the pagan excess that the decadent ACLU types want to celebrate? We can't have prayer or a moment of silence in schools, but drunkenness and debauchery in the streets is de rigueur. Interestingly enough, in 2002, The ACLU sued when a Mardi Gras celebration in San Luis Obispo was denied a parade permit.

Dissecting Leftism

John Jay Ray blogs on year after year and takes no prisoners.  I went on ego surfari at his site and pulled up a quotation and a reference for which I thank Dr. Ray:

Good comment from Bill Vallicella: "It is difficult to get lefties to appreciate the moral equivalence of the two totalitarian movements because there is a tendency to think that the Commies had good intentions, while the Nazis did not. But this is false: both had good intentions. Both wanted to build a better world by eliminating the evil elements that made progress impossible. Both thought that they had located the root of evil, and that the eradication of this root would usher in a perfect world. It is just that they located the root of evil in different places. Nazis really believed that Judentum ist Verbrechertum, as one of their slogans had it, that Jewry is criminality. They saw the extermination of Jews and other Untermenschen as an awful, but necessary, task on the road to a better world. Similarly with the Commie extermination of class enemies".

Bill Vallicella has a post saying that the Left are insensitive to danger. He says this is why they are always pretending that human nature is good and ignoring the fact that some people can be evil and dangerous. I think it is a bit worse than that. I think Leftist ideologues don't care about reality at all. That's one reason why they often claim that reality does not exist. They are so preoccupied with puffing up their own image and self-esteem that everything else just has to go hang. And anything that threatens that image will simply be denied. They will do and say ANYTHING in order to sound good. Clinically, it is called "Narcissism" and in more extreme cases, it is part of "Psychopathy".

Politically Correct ‘Classicism’

There is nothing so insane that a 'progressive' won't support. How about the classics without the classical languages?  Here:

Connolly seemed hostile to the study of classical Greek and Latin. She said that the ancient languages could not be taught anymore by Classics departments. She did not say why, besides cost. Instead, she thought that “we” should not require all classicists to teach Greek and Latin. “I think the field would be better served by training a next generation of faculty free and empowered to focus on teaching topics of broader interest.” Not Latin or Greek, in other words.

No, you are not dreaming. Pinch yourself. This stuff is really happening.

Conflict Resolution, Troubling Trends, and ‘Liberal’ Bias

This from a New York Times article:

“People are making up stories about ‘the other’ — Muslims, Trump voters, whoever ‘the other’ is,” she said. “‘They don’t have the values that we have. They don’t behave like we do. They are not nice. They are evil.’”

She added: “That’s dehumanization. And when it spreads, it can be very hard to correct.”

Dr. Green is now among a growing group of conflict resolution experts who are turning their focus on the United States, a country that some have never worked on. They are gathering groups in schools and community centers to apply their skills to help a country — this time their own — where they see troubling trends.

They point to dehumanizing political rhetoric — for example President Trump referring to the media as “enemies of the people,” or to a caravan of migrants in Mexico as riddled with criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners.”

I beg to differ. When we conservatives point out that Muslims do not share our values, we are not making up stories about them. We are telling the truth.  Our classically liberal, American, Enlightenment values are incompatible with Sharia. That is a fact. It is not an expression of racism, xenophobia, or any sort of bigotry.  It is not even a judgment as to the quality of their values.

And because Muslims have different values, they behave differently.  This is perfectly obvious, and to point it out should offend no one. 

Does every Muslim uphold Sharia? No. The great American Zuhdi Jasser does not. But he is an outlier.

To describe Muslims and their values and patterns of behavior is not to 'dehumanize' them. They are human all right; it is just that their values and views make living with them them difficult if not impossible. There can be no comity without commonality.

'Liberals' make the mistake of thinking that 'deep down' we are really all the same and want the same things. That is plainly false.

Trump exaggerates and is careless in his use of language. He is a builder and a promoter, not a wordsmith.  He speaks with the vulgar, but the learned who are not hopelessly biased against him know how to 'read'  and 'translate' him. I will give one example, and you can work out the others for yourself if you have the intelligence and moral decency to do so.

"The media are enemies of the people." Translation: the mainstream media outlets with the exception of Fox News are dominated by 'progressives'  and coastal elitists whose attitudes and values are at odds with the "deplorable" (Hillary's term of abuse) denizens of fly-over country who "cling to their guns and religion" (Obama's abusive phrase). 

The values that patriotic Americans cherish are routinely ridiculed and rejected by left-wing media poo-bahs.  In this sense, they are enemies of the people.

Contrary to what 'liberals'  maintain, Trump is not launching an attack on the Fourth Estate as such.  He is attacking the blatant and pervasive left-wing bias of most of their members, bias which is evident to everyone except those members and the consumers of what cannot be called reportage but must be called leftist propaganda.

Article here.

Proof that I am a Native American

A while back a front page story in the  local rag of record, The Arizona Republic, implied  that one is either a native American, a black, or an Anglo. Now with my kind of surname, I am certainly no Anglo. And even though I am a 'person of color,' my color inclining toward a sort of tanned ruddiness, I am undoubtedly not black either.

It follows that I am a native American. This conclusion is independently supported by the following argument:

1. I am a native Californian.
2. California is in America.
3. If x is native to locality L, and L is within the boundaries of M, then x is a native M-er.
Therefore
4. I am a native American.

This argument is impeccable in point of logical form, and sports manifestly true premises. What more do you want?

Note that (2) is true whether 'America' is taken to refer to the USA or to the continent of North America.

Let us also observe that since I am a native American, it cannot be the case that "we are all immigrants" as far too many 'liberal' knuckleheads like to claim.

We need more mockery of 'liberals.' There is little point in attempts to engage them on the plane of reason, for that is not the plane they inhabit.

Slavoj Zizek remarks (jokingly I think) that  ‘native Americans’ hate this term, mentioning one who preferred to be call an ‘Indian’ on the ground that ‘native’ American is racist. For it means that someone so denominated  is part of nature, and is therefore beneath the cultural American. The Indian in question prefers to be called an ‘Indian’ for this moniker implies the white man's stupidity.

Ideology at Odds with Open Inquiry

(Cross-posted at my FB page where comments are allowed.)

You will recall how Galileo got in trouble with the Inquisition. But now the Roman Catholic Church is a spent force culturally speaking and, under the 'leadership' of Bergoglio, is busy accommodating itself to the Left, which is now the arbiter of what is 'correct' and 'permissible.'

This philosopher asks: Could it be racist if it is true?

The Left responds: It cannot be true, because it is racist, and it is racist since it implies that we are not all equal as a matter of empirical fact.

Note what has happened. Christianity taught the equality of persons as sons and daughters of the Supreme Person. The Left jettisons the metaphysical foundation and misunderstands the normative claim about equality as a factual claim.

The Left goes only half way with the death of God. They reject God, but not the equality that makes sense only if God exists. This incoherence fuels their opposition to scientific research that contradicts the leftist equality axiom. And so Dr. Watson, despite his accomplishments, must be banned to scientific Siberia.

Science must play the handmaiden to leftist ideology just as philosophy and science had to play the handmaiden to theology in the Middle Ages and a long time thereafter.

And you STILL support the Left?

 
DNA pioneer loses honours over race claims
Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson has repeated remarks about…

Rod Dreher on the Purveyors of ‘Progressive’ Poison

Here:

These people. They have to be stopped. They’re ruining life. Who wants to work for a company where you can become an internal pariah for standing by your old friend? Who wants to work in a neurosis-ridden hamster cage where you have to be afraid that the internal mob will turn on you for having the “wrong” opinion? Who wants to get involved in helping out at your local school when ideologically-charged activists rush in to politicize everything?

[. . .]

UPDATE: A reader who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia writes:

It may look like Communism but it isn’t.  It’s worse. Nobody, and I mean nobody (perhaps with one notable exception of a very decent guy, actually), believed the communist propaganda drivel. I don’t recall anybody fainting at the thought of imperialist ‘diversants’ sneaking across the border, revanchists hiding in their closets. It was a mechanism to control, brutalize and destroy and both the brutes and the brutalized understood it as such. Our current situation is somewhat unique. We actually have a large class of people who take this garbage at face value. That’s scary.

Niall Ferguson on Christine Blasey Ford and #MeToo

Well worth reading. Especially this:

The #MeToo movement is revolutionary feminism. Like all revolutionary movements, it favors summary justice. Since April 2017, more than 200 men have been publicly accused of some form of sexual offense, ranging from rape to inappropriate language. A few of these men seem likely to have committed crimes and are being prosecuted accordingly — notably the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. But #MeToo seems to have created a single catch-all crime, in which rape, assault, clumsy passes, and banter are elided into one.

With a few exceptions, reputations have been destroyed and careers ended without due process. "I believe her" are the fateful words that, if uttered by enough people, perform the roles of judge and jury.

Sexual harassment is bad, no question. And yet a much bigger threat to women's rights is largely ignored by Western feminists. As my wife likes to point out, verse 2:282 of the Koran states that a woman's testimony is worth only half of a man's testimony in court. (Some people want the opposite to apply in Ford v. Kavanaugh.) Wherever sharia law is imposed — from the armed camps of Boko Haram or ISIS to the sharia courts found in most Muslim-majority countries — it is women who lose out. Do Senate Democrats care? No. When my wife testified on this subject last year, they literally ignored her.

Read it all. I mean it. It gets even better!  If you've seen Ferguson in action on C-Span or on Fox you know he is tops — assuming you have my level of good judgment.

Academentia and the Need for Fumigation

Here:

Everyone is buzzing today about the revelation of the three academics—James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian—who placed over a dozen complete hoax articles with various premier “cultural studies” or “identity studies” academic journals. All three professors, it should be noted, consider themselves left of center, as does Alan Sokal, the New York University physicist who placed a hoax article about the supposed subjectivity of physics in the postmodernist journal Social Text 20 years ago. 

There are termites everywhere, undermining the foundations of sanity, reason, and moral decency.  There is Bergolio and his bunch in the Roman church; the lamestream media is infested with the little buggers; the academic world is lousy with leftists; the deep state is corrupt to the core; Big Tech is inimical to free speech; the Democrat Party is the party of slander and senselessness, and Hillary is on the loose.  It's a stinking lousy mess all around.

When I was a young man knockin' around in the years between college and graduate school I worked at various jobs. For a time I was an exterminator for Pan American Pest Control out of Santa Monica, California. The boss wanted to set me up in the business but I had my sights set higher.  I fancied philosopher a higher calling than bug killer.

It occurs to me now that I am still working in pest control and fumigation. But on the ideal, as opposed to the real, plane.  I am out to exterminate willful stupidity, groupthink, the misuse of language, political correctness . . . .

Paul Gottfried on the Destructive Left

Here:

The pulling down and defacing of statues by the cultural Left has now spread from the states of the onetime Confederacy to the West Coast. There, Democratic politicians in alliance with various leftist activists are removing what we are told are offensive images from public view.

This iconoclastic fury has spread from removing statues of Columbus from municipal buildings and parks to dismantling memorials and plaques put up to honor Spanish missionaries. The attack on missionary settlers is justified by citing their use of native Indian labor as well as the more questionable claim that they forcibly converted the native inhabitants to Catholicism.

The missionaries who are now being dishonored created much of the Hispanic culture embraced by Latino minorities, including their language and majority religion. Latinos may have Aztec or Mayan blood, but they are also descended from Spaniards and took on much of a recognizably Spanish way of life.  

Has that miserable termite Bergoglio spoken against this?  Or is he too busy worrying about straws in the ocean? Defund the evil-doers.

Have you ever wondered why the Catholic bishops oppose border control? It is pretty clear: they think they can keep their organizational hustle going if plenty of illegal Hispanics are allowed to flood in.  Am I being fair? Do some research and decide for yourself.

‘Catholic’ Universities More of a Joke than the Roman Church Itself

Defund the cultural polluters! They understand money if nothing else.  Dreher:

Christine Fair is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University, and a troubled person, judging by her Twitter feed. For example:

Read it all, as Rod would say. If you can stomach it.

The Left’s Attack on Merit

I regularly speak of the destructive Left. There is no exaggeration in that.  Whether they intend it or not, leftists promote policies that are destructive.  They attack merit, for example, bizarrely considering it to be 'racist.' 

For example, there is the case of New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has proposed to do away with Stuyvesant High School's entrance exam. Why is it 'racist'?  Well, Asians do better than anyone else, better than whites who do better that Hispanics, who do better than blacks.  Here is the composition of the incoming class:

Asian — 613
White — 151
Hispanic — 27
Black — 10

There is no proportional representation! A lack of diversity! And therefore it's 'racist'!

But seriously now, how can it be racist if it is true? Answer me that one.

Full Disclosure: I am not now and never have been Asian. (And I am on record as denying the possibility of race change.) If Asians are better at math than whites, that's just the way it is.  We conservatives respect reality, a reality that is no social construction but lies beyond all of our talk with its mewling and pining, wishing and whining.  We conservatives stand our ground, that ground being the terra firma of antecedent reality, to cop a beautiful line from Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963):

It is my contention that a conservative is a realist, who believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own will and desire. He believes that there is a creation which was here before him, which exists now not just by his sufferance, and which will be here after he is gone. This structure consists not merely of the great physical world but also of many laws, principles, and regulations which control human behavior. Though this reality is independent of the individual, it is not hostile to him. It is in fact amenable by him in many ways, but it cannot be changed radically and arbitrarily. This is the cardinal point. The conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law without any regard to limits and to the fixed nature of things . . . . The conservative I therefore see as standing on the terra firma of antecedent reality; having accepted some things as given, lasting and good, he is in a position to use his effort where effort will produce solid results. (Quoted from Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver 1910-1963, University of Missouri Press, 1995, pp. 144-145.)

It ought to be self-evident that we ought to promote excellence, but it is not self-evident to destructive leftists. I do not say that diversity is no value at all. But in this case it ought to be obvious that merit trumps diversity. 

I want you people to realize that if you vote for Democrats you are voting for this sort of Bozo de Blasio insanity, and a lot of other insanity to boot.  But is it really insanity? Or is it worse?

I am toying with what I will call the Leftist Trilemma: leftists are either stupid/insane or ignorant/uneducated or willfully evil.

But I may be missing a fourth possibility.