The truth is PC doesn't hack it in war. PC is a rich liberal's plaything, a luxury item. It works best as a subject for ridicule on South Park. And it's not the way we really think. It's the way we pretend we think. So just who is it that is blowing innocent people to smithereens in Paris, Beirut, Sharm, and Mali, and who knows where else next? Zen Buddhist monks? The Little Sisters of the Poor?
Everybody knows who it is. Islam has a big problem and although people want to be polite or deliberately lie about it to look "good" to their neighbors or to their cousins at the Thanksgiving table, when they get into a voting booth, many of them are guiltily going to be pulling the lever for someone with the you-know-what to put an end to this global homicidal insanity – and it's not going to be John Kasich or Rand Paul or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. It's going to be Donald Trump. And if not Donald, possibly Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, both of whom seem to be able to find Raqqa on a map. And none of these people are racists, not even faintly, no matter what some NBC reporter wants to imply.
Responding to a commenter who states that one exposes oneself to tremendous risk by speaking out against leftist insanity, Malcolm Pollack writes:
Most bloggers who write from a contrarian position about these things seem to use noms de plume. In fact, I do have another blog I’ve set up for this purpose, but I almost never post anything to it. I prefer to speak under my own name — not because I’m trying to be “brave”, which this really isn’t at all, but just because it feels more honest, and because I have a right to, and because I’m ornery. (Running into that theater in Paris to try to save the people inside, knowing you are overwhelmingly likely to be killed: that’s brave. Writing grumpy blog-posts from the comfort and safety of my home is not.)
I would underscore the First Amendment right to free speech under one's own name without fear of government reprisal. Use it or lose it. (Unfortunately, the disjunction is inclusive: you may use it and still lose it.) But use it responsibly, as Pollack does. The right to express an opinion does not absolve one of the obligation to do one's level best to form correct opinions. Note however that your legal (and moral) right to free speech remains even if you shirk your moral (but not legal) obligation to do your best to form correct opinions.
I would add to Pollack's reasons for writing under his own name the credibility it gives him. You lose credibility when you hide behind a pseudonym. And when you take cover behind 'anonymous,' your credibility takes a further southward plunge, and shows a lack of imagination to boot.
Pollack is right: it doesn't take much civil courage to do what he and I do. I've made mine, and he is on the cusp of making his, if he hasn't already. (You could say we are 'made men.') We don't need jobs and we have no need to curry favor. And our obscurity provides some cover. Obscurity has its advantages, and fame is surely overrated. (Ask John Lennon.)
This is why I do not criticize the young and not-yet-established conservatives who employ pseudonyms. Given the ugly climate wrought by the fascists of the Left it would be highly imprudent to come forth as a conservative if you are seeking employment in academe, but not just there.
What is civil courage? The phrase translates the German Zivilcourage, a word first used by Otto von Bismarck in 1864 to refer to the courage displayed in civilian life as opposed to the military valor displayed on the battlefield. According to Bismarck, there is more of the latter than of the former, an observation that holds true today. (One example: there is no coward like a university administrator, as recent events at the university of Missouri and at Yale once again bear out.) Civil courage itself no doubt antedates by centuries the phrase.
. . . and avoid politics. But philosophy needs a 'safe space' within which to flourish. And that space needs to be defended against the two-fold totalitarian threat. There is the threat from radical Islam and the threat from the leftist enablers of and apologists for radical Islam. (If you insist that radical Islam = Islam, I may come to agree with you; in which case 'radical' in 'radical Islam' is a redundant qualifier. But pleonasm is but a peccadillo, if that.)
So if you are a decent human being with an ounce of gratitude for the fruits of Western civilization, then you should do your bit. At a minimum, show a little civil courage and speak out against the Muslim barbarians and the liberal-left scum who enable them while attacking our great institutions such as the universities.
Leftists are consummate linguistic hijackers. I've been making this point since the inception of this weblog back in aught-four. I won't repeat my examples. It just now occurred to me that a useful tactic in the culture war might be the reverse hijacking of liberal-leftist lingo.
I have done this three times in the last few days without conscious subsumption under the italicized rubric.
Thus 'Black Lives Matter' gets twisted into 'Black Lies Matter' to highlight the fact that the distortions, falsehoods, and outright lies of many blacks and their liberal-left enablers get people killed, mostly blacks, and undermine the rule of law.
'Safe space' and 'trigger warning' are easily mocked as I did a few hours ago.
All's fair in love and war, and this is a war, muchachos. Make no mistake about it. The behavior of leftists shows that they see it as a war, as witness their relentless smearing of Dr. Ben Carson. They practice without scruple the politics of personal destruction. They did it to Sarah Palin in an especially vile manner, and to Herman Cain. If they see politics as a war, we can't see it as a gentlemanly debate. Mockery and derision are potent weapons as Saul Alinsky recognized and they must be employed to attack the enemies of the republic and to energize those who, for whatever reason, are impermeable to calm and learned disquisitions.
But you must also have rigorous arguments and calm disquisitions at the ready for those who are capable of processing them.
Voter ID laws have been challenged because liberal Democrats deem them racist. I guess that’s because they see blacks as being incapable of acquiring some kind of government-issued identification. Interesting enough is the fact that I’ve never heard of a challenge to other ID requirements as racist, such as those: to board a plane, open a charge account, have lab work done or cash a welfare check. Since liberal Democrats only challenge legal procedures to promote ballot-box integrity, the conclusion one reaches is that they are for vote fraud prevalent in many Democrat-controlled cities.
I have been saying the above for years. But what I hadn't noticed was the following:
There is another area where the attack on ballot-box integrity goes completely unappreciated. We can examine this attack by looking at the laws governing census taking. As required by law, the U.S. Census Bureau is supposed to count all persons in the U.S. Those to be counted include citizens, legal immigrants and non-citizen long-term visitors. The law also requires that illegal immigrants be a part of the decennial census. The estimated number of illegal immigrants ranges widely from 12 million to 30 million. Official estimates put the actual number closer to 12 million.
Both citizens and non-citizens are included in the census and thus affect apportionment counts. Counting illegals in the census undermines one of the fundamental principles of representative democracy — namely, that every citizen-voter has an equal voice. Through the decennial census-based process of apportionment, states with large numbers of illegal immigrants, such as California and Texas, unconstitutionally gain additional members in the U.S. House of Representatives thereby robbing the citizen-voters in other states of their rightful representation.
Arthur C. Brooks deplores the lack of ideological diversity and the prevalence of 'groupthink' in academia in an October 30th NYT editorial entitled "Academia's Rejection of Diversity." He is of course right to do so. But this is nothing new as any conservative will tell you. And we don't need studies to know about it, which is not to say that studies are not of some slight use in persuading doubters.
What I would take issue with, though, is Brooks' apparently unqualified belief that "being around people [ideologically] unlike ourselves makes us [intellectually] better people . . . ." I have added, charitably I should think, a couple of qualifiers in brackets.
Interaction with ideological opponents can be fruitful, and sometimes is. That goes without saying.
But I think it is very easy to overestimate the value of interactions with people with fundamentally different views. It is a mistake to think that more and more 'conversations' will lead to amicable agreements and mutual understanding. This mistake is based on the false assumption that there is still common ground on which to hold these 'conversations.'
I say we need fewer 'conversations' and more voluntary separation. In many situations we need the political equivalent of divorce. In marriage as in politics the bitter tensions born of irreconcilable differences are relieved by divorce, not by attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable. Let's consider some examples. In each of these cases it is difficult to see what common ground the parties to the dispute occupy.
1. Suppose you hold the utterly abhorrent view that it is a justifiable use of state power to force a florist or a caterer to violate his conscience by providing services at, say, a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony.
2. Or you hold the appalling and ridiculous view that demanding photo ID at polling places disenfranchises those would-be voters who lack such ID.
3. Or you refuse to admit a distinction between legal and illegal immigration.
4. Or you maintain the absurd thesis that global warming is the greatest threat to humanity at the present time. (Obama)
5. Or you advance the crack-brained notion that the cases of Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till are comparable in all relevant respects. Trayvon Martin Was No Emmett Till!
6. Or, showing utter contempt for facts, you insist that Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri was an 'unarmed black teenager' shot down like a dog in cold blood without justification of any sort by the racist cop, Darren Wilson.
7. Or you compare Ferguson and Baltimore as if they are relevantly similar. (Hillary Clinton)
8. Or you mendaciously elide distinctions crucial in the gun debate such as that between semi-auto and full-auto. (Dianne Feinstein)
9. Or you systematically deploy double standards. President Obama, for example, refuses to use 'Islamic' in connection with the Islamic State or 'Muslim' in connection with Muslim terrorists. But he has no problem with pinning the deeds of crusaders and inquisitors on Christians.
10. Or you mendaciously engage in self-serving anachronism, for example, comparing current Muslim atrocities with Christian ones long in the past.
11. Or you routinely slander your opponents with such epithets as 'racist,' 'sexist,' etc.
12. Or you make up words whose sole purpose is to serve as semantic bludgeons and cast doubt on the sanity of your opponents. You know full well that a phobia is an irrational fear, but you insist on labeling those who oppose homosexual practices as 'phobic' when you know that their opposition is in most cases rationally grounded and not based in fear, let alone irrational fear.
13. Or you bandy the neologism 'Islamophobia' as a semantic bludgeon when it is plain that fear of radical Islam is entirely rational. In general, you engage in linguistic mischief whenever it serves your agenda thereby showing contempt for the languages you mutilate.
14. Or you take the side of underdogs qua underdogs without giving any thought as to whether or not these underdogs are in any measure responsible for their status or their misery by their crimes. You apparently think that weakness justifies.
15. Or you label abortion a 'reproductive right' or a 'women's health issue' thus begging the question of its moral acceptability.
On each of these points and many others I could write a book demolishing the hard Left position that underlies the points and that dominates the universities, the mainstream media, the courts, and our current government. So what's to discuss? What conceivable motive could a conservative have to enter into debates with people who, from a conservative point of view, are willfully wrongheaded and demonstrably mistaken? There are open questions that need discussing, but the above aren't among them.
To repeat, Clinton and Obama knew it was a terrorist attack but tried to con the country, very much including the families of our dead, into believing our heroes had been killed by a spontaneous response to a video.
[. . .]
The lies about “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with” were dictated by the bipartisan Beltway policy of Islamist empowerment that Obama and Clinton championed. Indeed, at the time it occurred, the terrorist attack was just the latest in a series of jihadist threats and strikes in Benghazi. The policy of strategically and materially supporting Islamists made such attacks inevitable.
But it was election season. Obama and Clinton needed camouflage for the catastrophic failure of their policy. Thus: Clinton’s fustian about “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”
In point of fact, Clinton and Obama had everything to do with the anti-Islamic video trailer, Innocence of Muslims. Virtually no one would have known of it had they not tirelessly publicized it in the international media and in official American government statements that were studiously linked to the Benghazi massacre.
In reality, though, it was the video that had nothing to do with the rage and violence directed at Americans, first in Egypt, then Libya, then beyond.
The violence at the U.S. embassy in Cairo had been threatened for months by al-Qaeda operatives and was clearly planned to erupt on the eleventh anniversary of the terror network’s 9/11 atrocities. The jihadists had been empowered by both the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, orchestrated by Obama and Clinton, and the Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt, championed by Obama and Clinton.
In the weeks before September 11, 2012, al-Qaeda saber-rattled about a potential Tehran 1979–style attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo — perhaps they’d burn it to the ground, perhaps they’d take hostages to trade for American concessions like release of the Blind Sheikh (imprisoned for terrorism convictions in the U.S.).
Administration officials knew there would be trouble on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. They also knew that, if the trouble was perceived as the foreseeable fallout of their Islamist empowerment policy, it could mortally damage Obama’s 2012 reelection bid and Clinton’s 2016 election ambitions.
So the administration swung into action. The obscure video trailer had been condemned by a fiery mufti in Egypt. Word of it began to circulate, but almost no one had seen it. Though in some small circles it was added to the endless list of Islamist grievances against America, those grievances are ideologically driven — and Islamist ideology is incorrigibly anti-American, regardless of what pretexts are cited for acting on it.
So Clinton’s opportunistic underlings pounced, seeing the video as their chance to shape a fraudulent narrative. As Muslims — including al-Qaeda operatives — began menacing the Cairo embassy, the State Department put out a series of tweets, a transparent effort to spin the inevitable rioting as incited by the video, not enabled by the administration’s own promotion of Islamic supremacists.
The Benghazi siege began a few hours later.
In the aftermath, of course, the administration edited intelligence-community talking points in order to promote the video fraud and conceal the terrorist victory — even as Obama touted al-Qaeda’s purported demise in campaign speeches. Susan Rice, an Obama confidant and a top official in Clinton’s State Department, was dispatched to lie to the public on the Sunday shows. Obama and Clinton indignantly condemned the video in public-address announcements for Pakistani television, paid for by American tax dollars. Obama took to the podium at the United Nations to proclaim to the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
The administration then put the criminal-justice system in service of the fraud. Making good on Clinton’s deceitful vow, police raided the home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the video’s producer — arresting him in the dead of night, as if he were a violent criminal, even though he had been cooperating with law enforcement.
Why was he cooperating with law enforcement? Far from a crime, the making of the video was constitutionally protected activity — the kind of activity the executive branch is duty-bound to protect. But Nakoula went to law enforcement because Obama and Clinton’s smear had put his life in danger.
They did that, willfully, because they needed a scapegoat: Nakoula could serve the dual purposes of deceiving Americans into linking Benghazi’s dead to the video while convincing Muslims of Obama and Clinton’s longstanding commitment to subordinate constitutional free-speech rights to sharia’s blasphemy standards. Nakoula, a small-time con man whose prior conviction made him susceptible to revocation of parole, was the perfect foil.
He spent nearly a year in prison while Obama celebrated his reelection, Clinton plotted her campaign to replace him, and the Democrat-media complex helped them bury Benghazi as “old news.”
Just as she looked Charles Wood in the eye three years ago, while his son’s remains and those of three other Americans killed by jihadists lay nearby, so did Hillary Clinton look America in the eye during Thursday’s testimony. Both times, she seemed earnest, composed and determined as only a pathological liar can in the execution of a high-stakes fraud.
Perhaps you have heard of those nefarious behind-the-scenes operators, the shadowy Koch Brothers. To get an initial taste of just how evil they are, see here.
What struck me was Bernie Sanders' generous political self-immolation vis-à-vis Mrs. Clinton. He handed her the nomination by agreeing with her about the e-mail server (non)-issue. And the crowd loved it. (Is there a lesson here for Republicans?)
Here is my take on Sanders. He is basically a decent man who, though personally ambitious as every successful politician must be, nevertheless puts the good of the country, as he sees it, above his own personal ambitions. He is deeply rooted in principles that he honestly believes are correct. For him climate change, economic inequality, women's 'reproductive rights' and the rest are the real issues. And so he nobly took the high road to his own political marginalization by agreeing with Hillary that the e-mail server business is but a distraction from these real issues. After all, he could have justifiably attacked her on this very serious matter to bolster support for his nomination. He didn't.
If you're a 'progressive,' why vote for him when she is as much of a socialist and toes the politically correct line on guns to boot? (Nice pun, eh?)
Of course, there is another angle. Perhaps Bernie was playing the sycophant in hopes of a slot in the Hillary admin. But I don't think so. I really think he is a high-minded fellow with foolish and deleterious ideas. I could be wrong about the high-minded part.
By the way, we shouldn't be too harsh on our politicians. They are in the arena. They stand there, out in the open, under their own names, not hiding behind pseudonyms, exposed to the slings and arrows of a vast commentariat. They have courage. For this they deserve some respect. Even Hillary. Even Obama. Even the worst of them. For our worst are better than [you fill in the blank].
UPDATE (15 October): Daniel Henninger of WSJ agrees with me. He's a smart guy!
UPDATE (16 October): And Krauthammer too! Another smart guy. Nice tidbit:
The other three candidates hardly registered. Lincoln Chafee, currently polling at 0.3 points (minus-10 Celsius), played Ross Perot’s 1992 running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, who opened his vice presidential debate with: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
Consider first a parallel question: Could I support a Christian for president? Yes, other things being equal, but not if he or she is a theocrat. Why not? Because theocracy is incompatible with the principles, values, and founding documents of the United States of America.
Similarly, I could easily support a Muslim such as Zuhdi Jasser for president (were he to run) because he is not a theocrat or a supporter of Sharia. To be precise: Jasser's being a Muslim would not count for me as a reason not to support him, even though I might have other reasons not to support him, for example, unelectability.
When Dr. Ben Carson said he could not support a Muslim for president what he meant was that he could not support a Muslim who advocated Sharia. That was clear to the charitable among us right from the outset. But he later clarified his remarks so that even the uncharitable could not fail to understand him.
Some dismissed this clarification as 'backtracking.' To 'backtrack,' however, is to say something different from what one originally said. Carson did not 'backtrack'; he clarified his original meaning.
Nevertheless, CAIR has absurdly demanded that Carson withdraw from the presidential race.
Is there anything here for reasonable people to discuss? No. Then why is this story still in the news? Because as a nation we are losing our collective mind.
It's like Ferguson. What's to discuss? Nothing. We know the facts of the case. Michael Brown was not gunned down by a racist cop seeking to commit murder under the cover of law. Brown brought about his own demise. On the night of his death he stole from a convenience store, assaulted the proprietor, refused to obey a legitimate command from police officer Darren Wilson, but instead tried to wrest the officer's weapon from him. He acted immorally, illegally, and very imprudently. He alone is responsible for his death.
So there is nothing here for reasonable and morally decent people to discuss. But we are forced to discuss it because of the lies told about Ferguson by the Left. The truth does not matter to leftists; what matters is the 'empowering' narrative. A narrative is a story, and a story needn't be true to be a good story, an 'empowering' story, a story useful for the promotion of the Left's destructive agenda.
Another pseudo-issue that deserves no discussion except to combat the lies and distortions of the Left: photo ID at polling places.
For years it’s been remarked that we no longer have one American culture but many, that we’ve become Balkanized into a dizzying array of interests and identity groups separated by race, ethnicity, religion, and much else.
But we’re also separated, increasingly, by the news and commentary we read and watch. To the extent that it informs us of what’s going on, and why, and what to expect, our fragmentation and insularity has reached a dangerous tipping point: we no longer agree on what’s real.
Davidson illustrates his point by analysis of three recent examples: Ahmed Mohamed the Clock Maker; Carly Fiorina vs. Planned Parenthood; the invasion of illegals from Central America.
But what makes Davidson's article especially good is that he provides historical context by suggesting that the current mess had its origin in 1968 in a rancorous exchange between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal.
Buckley and Vidal met ten times over the course of the two conventions and spent most of their time attacking one another. Much of the debate footage is online, but the documentary plumbs the motivations of each man and the profound consequences of their televised battle. Of Vidal, Heritage Foundation historian Lee Edwards said, “I don’t think he was really interested in conducting a debate about the issues, or about the parties, or about the policies, or about the platforms of the two parties. What he wanted to do was to expose Bill Buckley.” In this Vidal succeeded, but not quite in the way he’d hoped.
The infamous moment came while they were debating the Vietnam War. Buckley compared opponents of the war to Nazi appeasers. Vidal, an opponent of the war, responded: “The only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.” Back then, calling someone a Nazi was taboo (unlike today, when it is mostly ridiculous). Buckley lost his temper. He leaned toward Vidal, shaking with anger, narrowed his eyes and said: “Now listen, you queer, quit calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
That moment, together with all the rancor and ad hominem attacks that had led up to it, inaugurated a new era in American media: the end of the old, sober centrism and the beginning of open ideological warfare. It didn’t happen overnight, but ABC’s success—the Buckley-Vidal debates propelled them to No. 1—didn’t go unnoticed, and on-air political debates between liberal and conservative pundits gradually became a regular feature of TV news programming: “The McLaughlin Group,” “Capital Gang,” “Crossfire,” and all the rest. The personal, vituperative tone of the Buckley-Vidal debates became the now-familiar register of political punditry.
We are now one step further into the cultural sewer:
Instead of shouting each other down the way they did on “Crossfire,” the new pundits are more apt to sneer and mock in the style of Jon Stewart. There’s little to be gained in arguing with an opponent but much to be gained by mocking him. What this means in practice is that we tend to seek out news and commentary that more or less reflects our own opinions back to us. Reading the news becomes an exercise in confirmation bias.
As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I will call the political burden of proof. The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so morally and intellectually obtuse as not to be worth talking to.
Jean van Heijenoort was drawn to Anne-Marie Zamora like a moth to the flame. He firmly believed she wanted to kill him and yet he travelled thousands of miles to Mexico City to visit her where kill him she did by pumping three rounds from her Colt .38 Special into his head while he slept. She then turned the gun on herself. There is no little irony in the fact that van Heijenoort met his end in the same city as Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky. For van Heijenoort was Trotsky's secretary, body guard, and translator from 1932 to 1939.
The former 'Comrade Van' was a super-sharp logician but a romantic fool nonetheless. He is known mainly for his contribution to the history of mathematical logic. He edited From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931 (Harvard University Press 1967) and translated some of the papers. The source book is a work of meticulous scholarship that has earned almost universally high praise from experts in the field.
One lesson is the folly of seeking happiness in another human being. The happiness we seek, whether we know it or not, no man or woman can provide. And then there is the mystery of self-destruction. Here is a brilliant, productive, and well-respected man. He knows that 'the flame' will destroy him, but he enters it anyway. And if you believe that this material life is the only life you will ever have, why throw it away for an unstable, pistol-packing female?
One might conclude to the uselessness of logic for life. If the heart has its reasons (Pascal) they apparently are not subject to the discipline of mathematical logic. All that logic and you still behave irrationally about the most important matters of self-interest? So what good is it? Apparently, van Heijenoort never learned to control his sexual and emotional nature. Does it make sense to be ever so scrupulous about what you allow yourself to believe, but not about what you allow yourself to love?
SOURCES (The following are extremely enjoyable books. I've read both twice.)
Anita Burdman Feferman, Politics, Logic, and Love: The Life of Jean van Heijenoort, Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1993.
Jean van Hejenoort, With Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacan, Harvard UP, 1978.
As an update, I am delighted to report that in just a week since its launch, we have already received 440,000 combined YouTube views for our new, satirical, 5-part video series on liberty—Love Gov: From First Date to Mandate.
With momentum now building, we would be most grateful for your help in sharing Love Gov in email, websites, blogs, social media, and other networks. Taking the video series “viral” will result in huge numbers of people—many of whom might otherwise not be open to such a message—gaining a powerful grasp of the problems of meddling government!
As you may recall, Love Gov personifies the increasing folly, cost, and intrusiveness of government in the lives of everyone, especially the young. It’s a lighthearted and comic approach to reach audiences on a personal level and inspire them to learn more and take action. [. . .]
Please help us spread the word and share this compelling video series with your colleagues, friends, family, and others. We are hoping Love Gov can shape history by reverberating far and wide, and we would greatly appreciate your recommending the series . . . .
