Leftism and Political Correctness – Page 57

Mangan’s Blog Has Been Removed

If you try to access Dennis Mangan's weblog you receive the message: Sorry, the blog at mangans.blogspot.com has been removed. (HT: Malcolm Pollack) If you were to ask me to speculate I would say that the forces of political correctness have something to do with this. I quit using the Blogger/Blogspot platform almost six year ago, and I don't understand why people stick with it, apart from the fact that it is free. Note the link to "report abuse" and "objectionable content" at the top of the Blogger homepage. You can bet that idiots in great numbers will abuse this link, idiots who do not appreciate the good old classically liberal values of toleration, open inquiry, and free speech.

For more discussion of the Mangan case, see Malcolm Pollack's post Thoughtcrime, and a post by Laurence Auster.

UPDATE (5:15 PM): Mangan informs me that he is back in the saddle, here, at Typepad.

UPDATE (4 December): I see that Mangan's old blog has been restored by the powers that be. Interestingly, if you Google 'Mangan's' you are shown a link to his Racial Consciousness. It is but speculation on my part, but I should think that it is posts like this that certain people find objectionable, and that got him blacked out, if only temporarily.

Go read the post and ask yourself if there is anything in it that a reasonable person could find 'hateful' or 'racist' or sufficiently objectionable to warrant censure. If you answer in the affirmative, then you brand yourself as hopelessly obtuse, both morally and intellectually.

The Climate Science Isn’t Settled

Three questions: Is global warming occurring? Is is anthropogenic? Is it sufficiently serious to warrant massive action? There is no good reason to think that all three questions have an affirmative answer. Here is an article by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

What is truly disturbing in all this is the extent of leftist ideological infiltration of science. But this is nothing new. See Stalin on Philology.

To put it polemically, the gas bags of global warming are CO₂mmies. The point of this bit of invective is to highlight the anti-free market, totalitarian, and politically correct ideological nature of this so-called 'science.'

Toleration and its Limits

Henry V. e-mails:

I have a question. Is there a technical philosophical term for the case when a principle, applied consistently, leads to its own negation? I have in mind the example of the principle of civic tolerance, that when consistently applied to groups such as Muslims who wish to see Sharia law instituted in the West, would lead to the destruction of tolerance. Many other examples can be found in contemporary politics.

This is a good question, Henry, and while I thank you for it, I am not sure of the answer, though 'fallacy of accident' is in the ball park as I explain below. You don't tell me what you mean by 'civic tolerance,' or how the principle of civic tolerance should read, and without a statement of the principle, it is hard to have a disciplined discussion. So let me extract a principle from the following UNESCO paragraph:

Continue reading “Toleration and its Limits”

The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant

Should we tolerate the intolerant? Should we, in the words of Leszek Kolakowski,

. . . tolerate political or religious movements which are hostile to tolerance and seek to destroy all the mechanisms which protect it, totalitarian movements which aim to impose their own despotic regime? Such movements may not be dangerous as long as they are small; then they can be tolerated. But when they expand and increase in strength, they must be tolerated, for by then they are invincible, and in the end an entire society can fall victim to the worst sort of tyranny. Thus it is that unlimited tolerance turns against itself and destroys the conditions of its own existence. (Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, p. 39.)

Continue reading “The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant”

Can a Black Man Vote Against Obamacare?

If a black congressman were to vote against a Democrat health care reform proposal, could he call himself a black man? According to this source:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Brother Jesse apparently thinks that it is somehow inscribed into the very essence of being black that one be a leftist.

When we conservatives label libs and lefties as loons, it is this sort of preternatural idiocy that we have in mind.

Travesty in New York

Will there be no end to the idiocies perpetrated by the Obama Administration? The latest is the absurd decision to give Islamic terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York City. As usual, Charles Krauthammer cuts to the nerve of the matter:

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

See also Mona Charen's Holder's True Motive for some incisive analysis.

Good Old Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, p. 161: "In the eyes of the true believer, people who have no holy cause are without backbone and character — a pushover for men of faith."

The True Believer was published in 1951. I read chunks of it in the '60s and returned to it in December of 2003. Hoffer had Osama bin Laden and his fatal mistake pegged fifty years before the events of 9/11/01. The prescience of this autodidactic stevedore is truly remarkable. Has there ever been a more independent independent scholar?

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
I am a native American.

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

Political Correctness Can Be Deadly: The Case of Nidal Malik Hasan

A militant Muslim lets out with the jihadist battle cry Allahu Akbar! (God is great!), mows down 43 unarmed fellow soldiers, and liberals and leftists refuse to call him what he is, an Islamist terrorist. The Left stands revealed in its moral cowardice and political correctness for all to see. Charles Krauthammer's Explaining Away Mass Murder nails the essential.

Liberal Dreckmeisters and Their Decadent Drivel

How is that for a polemical title?

The first decades of televison were comparatively wholesome compared to what came later. An example of outstanding TV was Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, which ran from 1959-1964. Comparing a series like TZ with trash like The Sopranos, one sees the extent of the decline.

Serling knew how to entertain while also stimulating thought and teaching moral lessons. Our contemporary dreckmeisters apparently think that the purpose of art is to degrade sensibility, impede critical thinking, glorify scumbags, and rub our noses ever deeper into sex and violence. It seems obvious that the liberal fetishization of freedom of expression without constraint or sense of responsibility is part of the problem. But I can't let a certain sort of libertarian or economic conservative off the hook. Their lust for profit is also involved.

What is is that characterizes contemporary media dreck? Among other things, the incessant presentation of defective human beings as if there are more of them than there are, and as if there is nothing at all wrong with their way of life. Deviant behavior is presented as if it is mainstream and acceptable, if not desirable. And then lame justifications are provided for the presentation: 'this is what life is like now; we are simply telling it like it is.' It doesn't occur to the dreckmeisters that art might have an ennobling function.

The tendency of liberals and leftists is to think that any presentation of choice-worthy goals or admirable styles of life could only be hypocritical preaching. And to libs and lefties, nothing is worse than hypocrisy. Indeed, a good indicator of whether someone belongs to this class of the terminally benighted is whether the person obsesses over hypocrisy and thinks it the very worst thing in the world. See my category Hypocrisy for elaboration of this theme.

Malcolm Pollack at the Gates of Vienna

Or rather, at the gates of Gotham. Malcolm writes,

Upon reading your post The Left's Death Wish, I thought you might find this interesting: A Genealogy of Radical Islam.

I've been contending with the liberal mindset regarding Islam over at my own place, where, for suggesting that the massacre at Ft. Hood was most likely an example of jihad, and of why an increasing Muslim presence in the West might not be such a good idea, I was tarred, as usual, as a vile Islamophobe.

It's often tempting, as my own shadow lengthens to the East, to withdraw to a quiet life of reading and contemplation. But scribble I must, it seems.

1. Well, Malcolm, I hope you don't succumb to the temptation to withdraw from the fray. To paraphrase Plato, the price the good pay for their indifference to politics is to be ruled by the evil. Not that I don't understand the temptation to withdraw. To quote from an earlier post:

Why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do.

[. . .]

The answer is that the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of solitude and beatitude. And so though we are not warriors of the body, we can and should do our tiny bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety.

2. I don't know whether to commend you or criticize you for the restraint and tolerance you have shown in the comment thread to your 11/5 post. One of the cyberpunks calls you a "xenophobe" while the other removes the 'crypto' from your ironic self-characterization as a "crypto-Nazi." Me, I DELETE and BLOCK the minute that sort of behavior is manifested. Why waste your time with abusive cyberpunks who hide anonymously behind their 'handles' while spewing their PeeCee nonsense?

The answer, I suppose, is that by responding you demonstrate to others, if not to the punks, how to rebut the charges. So perhaps I should commend you for your toleration. I suspect you will agree with me, however, that toleration has its limits.

3. We agree on the substantive point that, as you put it " the massacre at Ft. Hood was most likely an example of jihad. . . ." There is plenty of evidence for this, and it is most disconcerting that so many, blinded by their political correctness and moral cowardice cannot see it.

Blog on!

Liberty-Conscious Investing

It is not clear to me why liberals have proprietary rights in the phrase 'socially-conscious investing.' Someone whose investment choices reflect a concern for individual liberty is of course also interested in the nature of the society in which he lives, and is therefore also 'socially conscious.' A champion of individual liberty wants a society in which there is more individual liberty and less government interference. To this extent, such a champion is also 'socially-conscious.'

Continue reading “Liberty-Conscious Investing”

Postscript to The Real Culture War: The Schizoid Left in Cahoots with Islamists

A reader thinks I was "too charitable" in The Real Culture War. I wrote:

But this minor culture war, as heated as it has become recently, is, despite its importance, as nothing compared to the major war between the West, with its Enlightenment values, and militant Islam.

The reader responds:

Since the Enlightenment side of this culture war has taken sides with militant Islam, it can hardly be the case that our war with the Enlightenment is less serious than our war with militant Islam.

Speaking for myself, I don't consider myself at war with the Enlightenment, nor do I consider a sound conservatism to be anti-Enlightenment; what I oppose is the exaggeration and perversion of Enlightenment ideals by contemporary liberals and leftists. But the reader has a point, and in an earlier post, I took a harder line. What follows is a slightly redacted version of part of that earlier post. I hope my reader finds it sufficiently harsh:

Continue reading “Postscript to The Real Culture War: The Schizoid Left in Cahoots with Islamists”

The Real Culture War

Please study the following photographs. They depict adherents of the 'religion of peace' making such statements as: Behead those who insult Islam; Freedom go to hell; Be prepared for the real holocaust.

There is a sort of 'culture war' going on between liberals and conservatives in the West. But this minor culture war, as heated as it has become recently, is, despite its importance, as nothing compared to the major war between the West, with its Enlightenment values, and militant Islam. To put it roughly, we in the West are all or most of us liberals, classical liberals. The touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration, as I recall the famous CCNY philosopher Morris R. Cohen writing somewhere. Along the same lines, savor this admirable passage from Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher (Modern Library, 1999, p. 183):

Continue reading “The Real Culture War”