Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

There is no Systemic Racism

The Democrat Party is a party of race-hustlers. Clear proof of this is their endlessly repeated lie about 'systemic' or 'structural' or 'institutional' racism. David Horowitz, Big Agenda (Humanix, 2017), p. 51:

While institutional or systemic racism has been illegal in America for 50 years, the 2016 Democratic Party platform promises that "Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society." There is no evidence that such racism actually exists. It is asserted in a sleight of hand that attributes every statistical disparity affecting allegedly "oppressed" groups to prejudice against them because of their identity. This "prejudice," however, is a progressive myth. This is not to say that there aren't individuals who are prejudiced. But there is no systemic racism in America's institutions, and if there is, it is already illegal and easily remedied.

The Dem's race-obsession is an amazing thing to behold. With every passing day it becomes more insane.  An Asian man becomes the focus of a controversy because his surname 'Lee,' which is a mere sound-preserving transliteration of some Asian characters, reminds some idiots of Robert E. Lee. Soon thereafter, a banana peel ignites a controversy at Ole Miss. One can only hope that the Dems keep it up and destroy themselves.  They have found that playing the race card has gotten them what they want in many cases. But they need to think twice about transforming every card in the deck into a race card.  For while the leaders of the party are extremists, many of the rank and file retain a modicum of common sense.

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Virtual Virtue

Yet another from the pen of Victor Davis Hanson. The concluding section:

Noble Lies

Noble lying helps to explain virtual virtue: repeating something publicly that is not true but is considered something that should be true, is seen as helping to make it eventually true.

If the Bay Area public has witnessed gangs of minority youth terrorizing those on its Bay Area Rapid Transit trains, and if the transit authority in response refuses to release to the public surveillance tapes of such assaults or even to issue specific warnings, then perhaps the problem will disappear. Or at least the attacks can be virtuously contextualized—by supposedly nobly wishing to deny the media sensational reporting or to protect the civil rights of as yet uncharged marauding youths. So the transit authority virtue signals a falsity, and the public lives a reality. The more hushed the crime, the more it becomes a non-crime?

In sum, the more prominent persons voice virtual virtue at no cost, the quieter ones know better and make the necessary adjustments that fit what they see and hear and conclude. The result of our two worlds is that the virtual virtue signalers grow ever louder only to reach deaf ears; while the quieter become even more cynical and detached in having to live what increasingly seems a charade.

Antifa Thugs Ignorant of Contradiction?

Jonathan Turley:

At Berkeley and other universities, protesters have held up signs saying “F–k Free Speech” and have threatened to beat up anyone taking their pictures, including journalists. They seem blissfully ignorant of the contradiction in using fascistic tactics as anti-fascist protesters. After all, a leading definition of fascism is “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.”

If there is a 'contradiction' involved here it is not logical but practical/pragmatic. In the terminology of the preceding entry, it is not an instance of logical inconsistency, but of inconsistency in the application of a principle or standard.  If the principle is "It is wrong to employ fascist tactics," then the practical contradiction consists in the Antifa thugs' application of the principle to their enemies but not to themselves.   

But then it dawned on me (thanks to some comments by Malcolm Pollack and 'Jacques' who cannot go by his real name because of the leftist thugs in the academic world) that there is no practical/pragmatic contradiction or double standard here. The Antifa thugs and their ilk operate with a single standard: do whatever it takes to win.

They don't give a rat's ass about consistency of any kind or the related 'bourgeois' values that we conservatives cherish such a truth.  These values are nothing but bourgeois ideology the function of which is to legitimate the 'oppressive'  institutional structures that the Marxist punks battle against.

When Turley says that the thugs "seem blissfully ignorant of the contradiction" he assumes that they accept the principle but have somehow failed to realize that they are applying it inconsistently.  But that is not what is going on here. They don't accept the principle!  They have nothing against fascist tactics if they can be employed as means to their destructive ends.  But if the political authorities arrest them and punish them, as they must to maintain civil order,  then they scream Fascism! and dishonestly invoke the principle.

Besides, they don't accept the meta-principle that one ought to be consistent in the application of principles.

It is a mistake to think that one can reach these people by appealing to some values we all supposedly share. "Don't you see, you are doing the very thing you protest against!" You can't reach these evil-doers in this way. You reach them by enforcing the law. At some point you have to start breaking heads. But that is not 'fascism,' it is law enforcement.

If the authorities abdicate, if the police stand idly by while crimes against persons and property are committed, then you invite a vigilante response.  Is that what you want?

The "Fuck Free Speech" signs make it clear that the Antifa thugs do not value what we value. And because they do not share this classically liberal value, it is a mistake to say that they operate with a double standard: Free speech for me, but not for thee.  They don't value free speech at all; what they value is winning by any means. If there are times and places where upholding free speech is a means to their ends, then they uphold it. But at times and in places where shutting down free speech is instrumentally useful, then they will shut it down. 

It is right out of the Commie playbook. And just as a Nazi is not the cure for a Commie, a Commie is not the cure for a Nazi.  The cure for both is an American steeped in American values.

Scandal Erupts over Promotion of ‘Bourgeois’ Behavior

More proof that 'liberals' are insane:

Were you planning to instruct your child about the value of hard work and civility? Not so fast! According to a current uproar at the University of Pennsylvania, advocacy of such bourgeois virtues is “hate speech.” The controversy, sparked by an op-ed written by two law professors, illustrates the rapidly shrinking boundaries of acceptable thought on college campuses and the use of racial victimology to police those boundaries.

 

Leftists Eat Their Own

That they eat each other alive  is the only thing I like about them. Buon appetito! Here:

Even the ACLU has run afoul of the thought police. They are taking enormous heat for a tweet featuring a cute little girl with an American flag and a shirt bearing the message “Free Speech.” They’re guilty of promoting “white supremacy” because the girl is deplorably white. Naturally, they apologized profusely. (emphasis added.)

So the ACLU is not just a bunch of leftist shysters. They are a bunch of pussy-wussy leftist shysters. Michael Medved has referred to them as the "American Criminal Liars Union."

Related:

The ACLU on the Second Amendment

Shysters of the ACLU at it Again

Liberalism-Leftism as a Cognitive Aberration

Each day's newsfeed brings another dozen or so examples of how libs and lefties are losing their collective marbles and earning their epithets libtard and leftard.  Here is just one recent example for your astonishment:

It was a story too dumb to be real: reports yesterday emerged from ESPN critic Clay Travis at Outkick the Coverage that ESPN had pulled an Asian announcer named Robert Lee off a University of Virginia college football game to avoid offending idiots. I have to admit, I didn’t think it could be true. How unbelievably stupid do you have to be to think that someone whose name is similar to a Confederate general – albeit absent the all-important middle initial – would lead to triggering and upset viewers if he called a Charlottesville-based sporting event.

Please pray for these sick puppies.  Unfortunately, many of them are not just sick but vicious to boot which suggests that harsher treatments may be called for.

Iconoclasm: Another Similarity Between Muslims and Leftists

Muslims are well-known for their iconoclasm, hostility to the arts, and destruction of cultural artifacts. Leftists are like unto Muslims in this regard too. There is also the iconoclasm of the Left. For now, a couple of links to introduce the topic.

Leftist Iconoclasm Must Stop

Stomping on Jesus: The Iconoclasm of the Left

The trouble with iconoclasm is that all parties can play the game. 

Mass-murdering communist regimes are responsible for some 94 million deaths in the 20th century. Why not then destroy all the statues and monuments that honor the likes of Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Fidel Castro and all others who either laid the foundations for or carried out mass murder?  

You understand, of course, that I am not advocating this.  For one thing, the erasure of history would make it rather more difficult to learn from it. For another thing, there would be no end to it.  Why not destroy the Colosseum in Rome? You know what went on there.

Or how about St. Robert Bellarmine, S. J. ?  Should paintings and statues of him be destroyed?  He had a hand in the burning at the stake of the philosopher Giordano Bruno! According to Wikipedia:

Bellarmine was made rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. Immediately after his appointment as Cardinal, Pope Clement made him a Cardinal Inquisitor, in which capacity he served as one of the judges at the trial of Giordano Bruno, and concurred in the decision which condemned Bruno to be burned at the stake as a heretic.[5]

Better known is the fact that Bellarmine is the man who hauled the great Galileo before the Inquisition. 

Calling all philosophers and scientists! To your sledge hammers and blow torches!

And then there are the paintings, statues, etc. of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plagiarist and adulterer.

There is no need to multiply examples. You should be getting the point along about now.

Statue_of_Lenin_SeattleThe Statue of Lenin is a 16-foot (4.9 m) bronze sculpture of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin located in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Initially installed in Czechoslovakia in 1988, the sculpture was removed after the Velvet Revolution and brought to the United States in the 1990s.

Why is Friendship So Fragile Among Intellectuals?

A certain commie and I were were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon.  But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

……………

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

Out of Power, the Left Resorts to Violence

In power, leftists denounce the politics of personal destruction and issue hypocritical calls for 'civility'; out of power, the end justifies the means, personal destruction is full on, and civility is out the window. George Neumayr:

Liberalism, philosophically speaking, is proudly unprincipled, insofar as it recognizes no divine law prior to man’s will. The arrogant humanism underpinning liberalism, combined with fallen human nature, makes the temptation to violence irresistible, especially in times of political exile. When safely ensconced in positions of power, liberals demand “civility” and the like (remember the ludicrous “civility” commissions set up during the Clinton era to counter Rush Limbaugh and company). But once out of power, liberals flirt with ends-justify-the-means radicalism.

That certainly seems to be what is going on as quisling 'conservatives,' i.e., Never-Trumpers, aid and abet Deep State operatives, the Democrat Party, and the liberal media in their attempt to destroy the Trump administration by any means.

For example, Trump is supposed to have colluded with the Russians to swing the election in his favor. No evidence of this has emerged despite months of searching. But we know all about the Clinton Foundation's role in the Russian uranium deal, and we know about it from The New York Times! So why isn't the former Secretary of State being investigated?  Because it is Trump who needs to be destroyed. 

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The Bret Weinstein-Heather Heying Caper at Evergreen State

Having come to expect lunacy from lefties, I was not dismayed, but entertained, by the absurd bigotry that seeps out of the following passage from this Chronicle of Higher Education piece:

Now the couple weighed a new option. A producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight, a prime-time show on Fox News, had asked if Mr. Weinstein wanted to make his case to the conservative commentator and his millions of viewers.

It was a nauseating thought, says Ms. Heying. Theirs was an NPR family. Back in college, Mr. Weinstein had stood up to fraternities at the University of Pennsylvania over sexist and racist behavior at their parties. In an ideal world, says Ms. Heying, they would have talked to The New York Times or The Washington Post. But that’s not who had come calling.

"He was horrified, I was horrified," Ms. Heying told The Chronicle. "Tucker Carlson is someone he mocks in his classes."

Weinstein teaches biology and he wastes class time on political commentary and mockery of talk show hosts?

One thing I do like about lefties, though, is that they eat their own with a hunger and ferocity unlike anything on the Right. The 'progressive' Weinstein, who is now a 'racist,' is learning this the hard way. May he come to his senses. May he come to appreciate that conservatives are the new liberals, and liberals the new fascists. 

I have written a number of articles critical of NPR and PBS. Here is an excerpt from National Public Radio and the Tit of the State:

"If the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the State?" (Charles Krauthammer)

One answer is that the booboisie  of these United States is too backward and benighted to appreciate the high level of NPR programming.  The rubes of fly-over country are too much enamored of wrestling, tractor pulls, and reality shows, and, to be blunt, too stupid and lazy to take in superior product.

Being something of an elitist myself, I am sympathetic to this answer.  The problem for me is twofold.  NPR is run by lefties for lefties.  That in itself is not a problem.  But it is a most serious problem when part of the funding comes from the taxpayer.  But lefties, blind to their own bias, don't see the problem.  Very simply, it is wrong to take money by force from people and then use it to promote causes that those people find offensive or worse when the causes have nothing to do with the legitimate functions of government.  Planned Parenthood and abortion.  NEA and "Piss Christ."  Get it?

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Hillary’s Victimology

This is choice:

In fact, that’s one of the reasons Clinton cites for losing. Not Dewey, but the expectation that the immense campaign she’d planned for so many years would indeed succeed. She lost, she explains, as “the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win.” Say what?

Liberals love a victim and show no shame in posturing as victims themselves while nurturing their grievances. Perhaps Hillary and Kathy Griffin should get together for coffee.