Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

  • On Race, ‘Progressives’ Are Stuck in the Past

    It is a bit of a paradox: so-called 'progressives,' i.e., leftists, who routinely accuse conservatives of wanting to 'turn back the clock,' are doing precisely that on the question of race relations.  They yearn for the bad old Jim Crow days of the 1950s and '60s when they had truth and right on their side…

  • The Lunacy of the Left

    Here is yet another example of leftist lunacy  from the editors of The Nation: The real problem is not that jurors were willing to accord Zimmerman the  presumption of innocence—a bedrock of our justice system. It is that Trayvon  Martin, an unarmed teenager, was never accorded the same presumption—and that so  many defendants who look…

  • The Rage of the Wolff

    Robert Paul Wolff here vents "a rage that can find no appropriate expression" over "The judicially sanctioned murder of Trayvon Martin . . . ."  "Meanwhile, Zimmerman's gun will be returned to him.  He would have suffered more severe punishment if he had run over a white person's dog." What fascinates me is the depth of…

  • Liberals and Underdogs

    Why are liberals such reflexive  defenders of underdogs qua underdogs?  Here is a clue:  The Converse Callicles Principle: Weakness Does not Justify.

  • An Addendum on So-Called ‘Racial’ Profiling

    One of my persistent themes is that conservatives must not talk like liberals, thereby acquiescing in the linguistic hijacking that liberals routinely practice, and putting themselves at a disadvantage in the process.  Conservatives  must insist on standard English and refuse to validate the Left's question-begging epithets.  Only the foolish conservative repeats such words and phrases as 'homophobe,' 'Islamophobe,'…

  • Is There Such a Thing as Racial Profiling?

    One of the tactics of leftists is to manipulate and misuse language for their own purposes.  Thus they make up words and phrases and hijack existing ones.  'Racial profiling' is an example of the former.  It is a meaningless phrase apart from its use as a semantic bludgeon.  Race is an element in a profile; it…

  • The Zimmerman Verdict and the ‘Planetary’ Difference Between Left and Right

    The significance of the Zimmerman trial is that it is emblematic of the deep and ever-deepening racial divide in this country despite the successes of the civil rights movement of the '50s and '60s and the increasing participation of blacks in all institutions of our society, a participation culminating in the election of a black president…

  • Separation of Leftism and State

    Liberals support separation of church and state, and so do I.  But they have no problem with using the coercive power of the state to impose leftist ideology.  Now leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager (see article below), but it is very much like one, and if you can see what is wrong with…

  • Race and Grievance

    Recently over the transom from Monterey Tom: . . . I have had   a strained relationship with a long-time black friend who really thinks  that opposition to Barack Obama is racially based.  Beyond the personal level, I  despise the tactic of dividing people in this country and capitalizing on the  fact that some people love to nurture grievances derived…

  • Hate Thought

    My man Hanson once again. Excerpt: Apparently, racist, sexist or homophobic words themselves do not necessarily earn any rebuke. Nor is the race or gender of the speaker always a clue to the degree of outrage that follows. Instead, the perceived ideology of the perpetrator is what matters most. Maher and Letterman, being good liberals,…

  • Liberal Fascism: The Floral Variation

    Suppose a florist refuses to provide flowers for a Ku Klux Klan event, or a caterer refuses to cater a neo-Nazi gathering.  Suppose the refusal is a principled one grounded in opposition to the respective ideologies.  Would you say that the purveyors of the services in question would have the right to refuse service, and…

  • Liberal Apartheid

    Another great column by Victor Davis Hanson. 

  • Political Correctness: The Phrase and the Concept

    William Voegli claims that the phrase first entered the American vocabulary in 1991.  I don't know about that, but I do know that the concept is much older: PC derives from the CP, as I explain in Dorothy Healey on Political Correctness.  

  • German Home Schoolers Seek Asylum in USA

    Home-schooling is illegal in Germany.  So, "In 2008, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike left Germany with their five children and came to the United States asking for refugee status as an oppressed minority." So they left Germany to seek asylum in Left-Fascist Amerika.  There is a touch of irony here.  Well, we are not as far…

  • Lest We Profile . . .

    Well, we are all equally apt to engage in terrorism, right? Wise up, liberals.  To help you, I wrote the article below.  PeeCee can get you killed.  (Image credit: Sam Harris) Related articles Profiling, Prejudice, and Discrimination