Category: Leftism and Political Correctness
Defunding: The Most Effective Weapon in Our Arsenal?
When it comes to resisting the depredations of the Left, the best tactic is defunding/divestment.
- It's easy: just refuse to give money to your alma mater, say. When their bean counters make an appeal you simply ignore it, or explain why you will not fund opposition to your values.
- It costs nothing. No check to write!
- It is vastly more effective than any verbal protest. Money, or the withholding thereof, gets people's attention. But go ahead and write another blog post or letter of protest if it makes you feel better. It will be ignored by those who need to read it.
- No one, apart from the parties affected, need know about your refusal to play the chump. No worries about getting doxxed or otherwise harassed. But that ineffectual online protest you lodged could cost you your job. People have been cashiered for a Facebook 'like.' I kid you not.
Do You Value Your Health?
Then you must be a white supremacist.
This Unsinn is beneath refutation, but you ought to be aware of it. It supplies further reasons to divest the so-called 'universities' and to never vote Democratic.
Christianity and Politics
The Christian who sees politics with worldly eyes must support Donald J. Trump. The Christian who doesn't must withdraw from the fight and turn the other cheek even if it means getting slaughtered, just as Jesus allowed himself to be slaughtered. But the apolitical Christians won't be slaughtered right away. They will first have to endure the destruction of Christian culture, a process that is proceeding apace right before our eyes. Statues are being toppled, and churches destroyed, some of them ancient and of great historical significance. Ever hear of Junipero Serra and the San Gabriel Mission? After they have demolished monuments and memorials and desecrated churches, destructive leftists will begin changing place names. Ever hear of a town called 'Santa Barbara'? I am just scratching the surface. Fill in the details for yourself. Is anything safe from the raging nihilists of the Left? Cemeteries? It's happening, and more is coming. Or are you in denial?
To Christians such as David French who oppose Trump, I pose a simple question:
What do you propose that we do politically to put a stop to this destruction of Christian and indeed Western, heritage and civilization?
I don't doubt the sincerity and good intentions of French, and Mona Charen, and any number of other Never Trumpers, but they clearly don't have a practical plan. Starting up yet another 'conservative' publication such The Bulwark is just more yap-and-scribble. The Democrats are now a hard-Left party and their 'leader,' that 'good Catholic' Joe Biden, is but a puppet. (He is all in on abortion on demand and, horribile dictu, he reversed himself on the Hyde Amendment!) Do the Never Trumpers have an electable candidate to rival Trump? Not by a long shot.
So what is the plan ladies and gentlemen? Do you propose that we wait for for the 'true conservative' to come along? If he ever shows up it will be too late. A practical man deals with the situation at hand as best he can with what he's got. He does not let the best become the enemy of the good. He does not seek perfection in an imperfect world. Trump is all we've got. Show me I'm wrong.
I would guess that David and Mona and the other boys and girls of the yap-and-scribble brigade are not keen on hot civil war. But that could be in the cards: guns and ammo are flying off the shelves. The patience of the people has an expiration date. A lot of us don't approve of the erasure of history and heritage by leftist scum. And we don't cotton to the abdication of those to whom we entrust the preservation of civil order.
I grew up just a few miles from the 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission:
What We are Up Against
It helps to know the enemy and not be as naive as a Mona Charen. Despite her manifold lovelinesses and virtues, Charen is a useful idiot for the Left and a useless idiot for us. (She is what I call a 'topical idiot'; she is obviously not a total idiot. And while I am abusing her to some extent, my abuse is for her own good, grounded as it is in fact and in a concern for her mental clarity.)
Never-Trumpers, who are mostly journalists and lawyers, and have never built anything, allow themselves to become unhinged and distracted by Trump the inarticulate builder and political interloper, by his foibles and fatuities, his ungrammatical tweets, his exaggerations, sexual peccadillos, and what all else. And so they cannot see who the real enemy is. They cannot see the threat to their own way of life and to the set of values which they espouse but are impotent to conserve.
At the same time, these yap-and-scribble quislings and quibblers, these cruise-ship 'conservatives' who succeed in conserving nothing except their status and salaries, propose no candidate who could do better than Trump. They are impotent nay-sayers and obstructionists. A pox be upon them, and their dwellings and cruise ships and seminar rooms and all their works and days, and their progeny, intellectual and loin-driven, unto the seventh generation.
Please study the following from Powerline.
Memo to Leftists
Erase history and you won't be able to learn from it, including the dire consequences of erasing it.
The Childish Mentality of the Social Justice Warrior
The Cancel Culture’s Icons are Subject to Cancellation
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” —Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
The American Left has embraced a cancel culture whereby those who evince even the slightest deviation from moral perfection, no matter how long ago it occurred, is grounds for turning ordinary Americans into pariahs — and obliterating the historical contributions of prominent ones. That this moral perfection is defined by a generation of progressives with contempt for American history and culture, with no remorse for 60 million abortions, and with anarchy, looting, arson, and murder framed as “peaceful protests,” is beyond arrogant — even more so when it’s applied to historical figures who lived in wholly different times. What about progressive icons? Shouldn’t the same deficiencies precipitate the same cancellations?
You’ve been Cancelled and Sacked; Why Grovel?
Here:
Even liking the wrong tweets can cost you your career. Mike McCulloch, a math lecturer at Plymouth University, was recently investigated by his employer for liking a tweet that read “All lives matter.” Here in Canada, Michael Korenberg, chair of the board of governors for the University of British Columbia, was forced to step down because he liked some tweets praising Donald Trump. Nobody is safe—not even the phenomenally popular author J.K. Rowling, who has been hounded and harassed for saying that, when it comes to trans women, biology is still a thing.
My own field, journalism, has become notoriously full of little inquisitors. In the most disturbing example, James Bennet, opinion editor of the most important paper in the world, the New York Times, lost his job in June for publishing an opinion piece that many of the younger staffers didn’t like. It was written by a Republican senator, Tom Cotton, who argued that Donald Trump would be justified in deploying military troops to cities if local police could not maintain order in the streets. Staffers claimed the piece was so toxic that it put some of their colleagues’ lives in danger. Like many others, Mr. Bennet departed with a grovelling apology.
If you think the radical mob is now editing your daily paper, you might well be right. Last month, Stan Wischnowski, top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, was forced to resign over a headline that read, “Buildings Matter, Too.” All of this is dolefully reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution, during which students denounced their elders and made them parade through the streets in dunce hats before they were packed off to the pig farms for re-education.
And there is no statute of limitations. Last week, Boeing. Co.’s communications chief, Niel Golightly, abruptly resigned after an anonymous employee filed an ethics complaint over an article he wrote in 1987, 33 years ago. In it, the former military pilot had expressed the opinion that women shouldn’t serve in combat (a mainstream position at the time). “My argument was embarrassingly wrong and offensive,” he said in another cringeworthy mea culpa. “The article is not reflective of who I am.”
If you have lost your good, well-paying job, and are now persona non grata among the bien-pensant, why grovel? The worst has already happened. The Left has yet to build its re-education camps; so at the moment you needn't fear incarceration and 're-education.'
So why the grovelling apologies as in the fourth and sixth examples?
Why did Golightly go so lightly?
Leftism is not a Religion
Leftism is not a religion, but it is importantly like a religion.*
How so? Religions make a total claim on the lives of their adherents, and the committed latter live accordingly. The serious Buddhist, for example, does not merely meditate for an hour in the morning; he tries to bring the mindfulness of the meditation chamber into his whole day. He essays to live the Dharma. It is the same with serious Jews, Christians and Muslims despite their different beliefs and practices. The serious religionist sees everything from the point of view of his religion. It is not just a Friday, or a Saturday, or a Sunday thing.
It is the same with the serious leftist: his commitment is total to his totalitarian scheme. He politicizes everything — even the native flora of California — because, in his preternatural wrongheadedness, he thinks everything is political. Everything must be held hostage to the glorious Revolution at the secular, or immanent, eschaton to be brought about by the 'woke' who know and hate the true Devil whose name is 'Racism.'
But of course the political is but a part of reality and not the whole of it. The leftist is an idolater of a piece of finitude, the political sphere within the realm of Finite Being. But if God exists, then the Absolute exists and to live with total devotion to the Absolute cannot be idolatry. Matthew 22:36-40 New International Version (NIV):
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
It should be easily understood, therefore, why the Left is violently and viciously opposed to religion, even to the point of working in cahoots with Islam to destroy Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity. The Left will brook no competition in the totalitarian sweepstakes.
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*It is a logical error to suppose that if X is like Y, then X is a species of Y. Dennis Prager makes this mistake. But then he is merely a talk jock, even if one of the very best.
Chess is Racist!
Not only is chess racist, it is also sexist and patriarchal. The fact that the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board proves nothing to the contrary. The powers allowed to the Queen are in truth nothing more than so many sops thrown to the feminists to keep them quiet.
The sexism and patriarchalism of chess is proven by the dignity afforded to the King.
Wherein resides the dignity of the King? At every time in every possible game, the King is on the board. He cannot be captured: he never leaves the board while the game is on. He may be checked and checkmated; he is never captured. His royal consort, however, must submit to sacrifice, and is sacrificed gladly in the most beautiful of games. She has no dignity unto herself; she is but a means, nothing more than an overgrown pawn, and in some cases an ambitious upstart who has clawed her way to the eighth rank with the determination of a Hillary. She must die, when called upon, for the glory of His Majesty.
Another proof that chess is racist and oppressive and ought to be banned is that blacks are woefully under-represented among its players. This evil can have only one explanation: racist suppression of black players. For everyone knows that blacks as a group are the equals of whites as a group in respect of intelligence, interest in chess, and the sorts of virtues needed to play the undemocratic and reactionary 'Royal Game.' Among these are the ability to study hard, defer gratification, and keep calm in trying situations.
For these and many other reasons, we must DEMAND that chess be banned.
We must manifest solidarity with our oppressed Taliban brothers who have maintained, truly, that chess is an evil game of chance.
It is therefore most heartening to read that chess has been banned in some places in America. May this trend continue as we march forward, ever stronger, together to the land of social justice where there are no winners and no losers.
RELATED: 'Cancel culture' out to cancel chess!
Yet another proof that there is nothing so stupid and destructive that a 'liberal' won't support it.
Academentia
The Mandatory Banality of University Presidents. Excerpt:
Outrage has been stirred. An “incomprehensible loss” (Bacow) has befallen us. “Anger, pain, and fear” (Casey) have been unleashed. Something must be done to bring about communities that are “truly safe, supportive, and inclusive for all” (Price). Worse, this killing comes on top of the epidemic that “has profoundly disrupted the lives of people worldwide” (Bacow) and we “know it is even more challenging to support and lift each other up during this global pandemic, with the added difficulty of social distancing” (Barron).
Add This to the Fallacy File
A Comment Thread on Tribalism and Identity Politics from December, 2015
I’m not sure we need to even address the question of whether our race is essential to our personal identity or not. Isn’t it enough that it is a feature of us that is deeply important to our functioning in the world and part of the natural categories into which we separate ourselves?
As you define it, I doubt anyone here is a racial tribalist, because saying that you are “first and foremost” part of a race makes it sound as though the interests of that group or yourself as a member of that group trump everything else. I take it that the position that Jacques and I are defending is just that racial groups are morally legitimate and one’s racial affiliation provides genuine moral grounds for certain prioritizations of members of that race.
Anon. writes,
>>it is obvious that it is morally permissible to prioritize one’s family, one’s country, one’s species, etc. in various ways. So, it’s already obvious that “tribalism” is morally permissible. Why arbitrarily think that racial tribalism is illegitimate given that tribalism in generally is clearly morally permissible?<<
I take it that what you mean by tribalism in general is favoring or "prioritizing" one's X over another person's X, if they are different. So racial tribalism is favoring or "prioritizing" one's race over another's assuming they are different.
Whether or not this is morally permissible in a given case will depend on the nature of the favoring. In the O. J. Simpson case, the black jurors voted to acquit despite a mountain of evidence showing that he had murdered two white people. They favored Simpson over his victims because he is black. I would say that their favoring was morally impermissible.
We have to agree upon a definition of 'tribalism,' however, if we are to move forward.
Continue reading “A Comment Thread on Tribalism and Identity Politics from December, 2015”
When Quotation Suffices for Refutation
'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies, Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, "white people" would cease to exist for want of reasons.
Welcome to the delusional world of Ta-Nehisi Coates, that darling of 'liberal' elitists and the winner of numerous awards and accolades. I read his Between the World and Me a while back. The above is from that book.
Who is sicker, Coates, or the 'liberals' who fete him?
Part of an uncommonly good thread. Here is the entry to which the thread attaches.
………………………………………………….
Anon,
My point was that many short comments are better than one long one.
One problem here is that I tossed out a word, 'tribalism,' but did not define it. What's worse is that I used it very loosely. Mea culpa. It is a stretch to think of women as a 'tribe.'
Perhaps we have a 'family' of tribalisms: racial, sexual, etc.
Now I'll take a stab at a definition:
I'm Caucasian as you may have guessed. But when I get up in the morning I don't look into the mirror and affirm: I am a white man! This is who I am most fundamentally. This is what makes me be ME. This fact is what constitutes my innermost identity and is that attribute upon which my value as a person primarily supervenes.
I am therefore not a racial tribalist by my definition. This is not to say that I am not white or that being white is not a part of WHAT I am, namely an animal, a bit of the world's fauna. Indeed, insofar as I am an animal, it is arguable that I am essentially (as opposed to accidentally) white if we grant Kripke's point about the essentiality of origin: if I could not have had parents other than the parents I in fact have, then, given that both are white, I could not have failed to be white. So I am essentially white.
But is it essential to WHO I am that I be white? (Related question: Are persons reducible to objects in the natural world?)
Now in my definition above there is the phrase "member of the race of which he happens to be a member" which suggests that it is a contingent fact about me that I am white. There is the animal that bears my name, an animal that is essentially white. But there is a sense, brought out by Thomas Nagel in various writings, in which I am contingently the animal I am. I am contingently an animal that is essentially white.
But now we are drifting towards some very deep waters.