0 comment Friday, December 5, 2014 | admin
A while back, I read something about this new law, Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), which was passed quietly (as most laws are) last year and which came into effect last week or so. I paid scant attention to it, but I've just read about one curious feature of this new law, after Laurel Loflund posted about it at the Kinism forum. The article to which she linked was in the City Journal:
The New Book Banning
byWalter Olson
It�s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children�s products, the federal government has now advised that children�s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing�at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.
The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don�t conform.''
Laurel also linked to Gary North's piece on this law
Children's Books in Dumpsters: Washington's Madness Continues
Here is the new reality, one week old. If you can still find any pre-1985 books, it is because the thrift store's managers don't know they are breaking the law and could be fined or sent to prison if they persist.
[...]
The bureaucrats are now enforcing the letter of the 2008 law. Congressmen will feign ignorance. "Gee, how were we to know?"
Too late. The books are in landfill.
But why? "Stop dangerous lead paint!" Right. The lead paint in pre-1985 kids' books in minuscule traces. There is no known example of any child being injured by lead paint from a book. No matter. The law's the law.
This seems insane, but it is the relentless logic of the State: "Nothing is permitted unless authorized by the State."
The Federal government has authorized abortion on demand. But, once a parent allows a child to be born, that parent is not be allowed to buy the child a pre-1985 book. Such books are too dangerous for children.
This is the logic of Washington. This logic is relentless. It will be extended by law into every nook and cranny of our lives until it is stopped.''
Now, most of the criticisms I've since found of the law are concerned with the minutiae of it, or about other aspects of it, like the banning of certain clothing items like buttons or snaps which may contain toxic materials. But from my perspective, the most troubling thing about it is that it seems, beneath the surface, to be concerned with what our rulers consider 'toxic ideas', not lead in ink or in items of apparel.
Our government has different ideas of what is 'dangerous to our health' than my own idea. To them, it seems anything which comes from the pre-politically correct era is toxic. Our school textbooks and popular histories, in book form or on TV or the Internet, have been 'corrected' to conform with the present ideas of acceptability. We are all familiar with disputes between educators and parents, and complaints by ethnic agitators over 'racist' and 'xenophobic' words, images, and ideas in old textbooks and literature. I don't for a moment believe that the government would not like to wave a magic wand and cause all pre-PC books, movies, and recordings to disappear forever. Anything that would further that cause, even if only incidentally, would be just fine with them.
Some time back, I blogged about the 'cleansing' of old books from public libraries nationwide, and the overall dumbing down of libraries, usually under the guise of ''updating" and digitizing and changing the emphasis to electronic media. If some old, pre-PC books happened to be casualties of the march of progress, then -- oops, too bad, what a shame.
Most people don't question this; we have this ingrained idea that newer is better and that progress is inevitable and unstoppable, and that overall, all changes are part of progress and therefore we just have to accept it with a shrug. But I think we may lose a great deal of our heritage and history in those old books that are being unceremoniously thrown out or dumped in landfills, and what is being left in its place is not an improvement.
As a society, we no longer value the old in general, and every day it seems another article appears somewhere about the coming demise of the printed word. Books in general are valued less than ever before, as people passively accept that the book will soon be a relic of the past, of no use to us in the computer age. And old books generally are regarded as irrelevant if not downright backward and harmful to our delicate PC sensibilities.
This commentator understands the importance of what is happening.
...It used to be that the older the book, the more it was treasured as part of the collection. Now the opposite seems to be true: the most recent interpretations of human affairs are valued, while the older ones are discarded. Instant and untested knowledge trumps the wisdom of the ages.
Western civilization (or any other civilization worth its name) depends on written texts for its preservation, perpetuation, and development. Dead civilizations are studied through archeology, live ones are reanimated by reading books.
[...]
The removal of a sizeable percentage of books published before the 1960s truncates the memory of the present generation. If a significant chunk of interpretations of culture committed to paper is removed from easy circulation, the culture built on these interpretations will eventually wither. This was predicted by Marxists like Antonio Gramsci who wrote in the 1930s that it is not necessary to engineer bloody revolutions to change political systems and affect a transfer of power: it is enough to change culture to affect such a change. The massive removal of old books from university libraries is a small step in this direction. While many steps have to be taken to bring Gramsci�s vision to fruition, one should not ignore the small steps.''
I agree; the 'small steps' often go unnoticed but they are not insignificant.
The New Book Banning
byWalter Olson
It�s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children�s products, the federal government has now advised that children�s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing�at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.
The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don�t conform.''
Laurel also linked to Gary North's piece on this law
Children's Books in Dumpsters: Washington's Madness Continues
Here is the new reality, one week old. If you can still find any pre-1985 books, it is because the thrift store's managers don't know they are breaking the law and could be fined or sent to prison if they persist.
[...]
The bureaucrats are now enforcing the letter of the 2008 law. Congressmen will feign ignorance. "Gee, how were we to know?"
Too late. The books are in landfill.
But why? "Stop dangerous lead paint!" Right. The lead paint in pre-1985 kids' books in minuscule traces. There is no known example of any child being injured by lead paint from a book. No matter. The law's the law.
This seems insane, but it is the relentless logic of the State: "Nothing is permitted unless authorized by the State."
The Federal government has authorized abortion on demand. But, once a parent allows a child to be born, that parent is not be allowed to buy the child a pre-1985 book. Such books are too dangerous for children.
This is the logic of Washington. This logic is relentless. It will be extended by law into every nook and cranny of our lives until it is stopped.''
Now, most of the criticisms I've since found of the law are concerned with the minutiae of it, or about other aspects of it, like the banning of certain clothing items like buttons or snaps which may contain toxic materials. But from my perspective, the most troubling thing about it is that it seems, beneath the surface, to be concerned with what our rulers consider 'toxic ideas', not lead in ink or in items of apparel.
Our government has different ideas of what is 'dangerous to our health' than my own idea. To them, it seems anything which comes from the pre-politically correct era is toxic. Our school textbooks and popular histories, in book form or on TV or the Internet, have been 'corrected' to conform with the present ideas of acceptability. We are all familiar with disputes between educators and parents, and complaints by ethnic agitators over 'racist' and 'xenophobic' words, images, and ideas in old textbooks and literature. I don't for a moment believe that the government would not like to wave a magic wand and cause all pre-PC books, movies, and recordings to disappear forever. Anything that would further that cause, even if only incidentally, would be just fine with them.
Some time back, I blogged about the 'cleansing' of old books from public libraries nationwide, and the overall dumbing down of libraries, usually under the guise of ''updating" and digitizing and changing the emphasis to electronic media. If some old, pre-PC books happened to be casualties of the march of progress, then -- oops, too bad, what a shame.
Most people don't question this; we have this ingrained idea that newer is better and that progress is inevitable and unstoppable, and that overall, all changes are part of progress and therefore we just have to accept it with a shrug. But I think we may lose a great deal of our heritage and history in those old books that are being unceremoniously thrown out or dumped in landfills, and what is being left in its place is not an improvement.
As a society, we no longer value the old in general, and every day it seems another article appears somewhere about the coming demise of the printed word. Books in general are valued less than ever before, as people passively accept that the book will soon be a relic of the past, of no use to us in the computer age. And old books generally are regarded as irrelevant if not downright backward and harmful to our delicate PC sensibilities.
This commentator understands the importance of what is happening.
...It used to be that the older the book, the more it was treasured as part of the collection. Now the opposite seems to be true: the most recent interpretations of human affairs are valued, while the older ones are discarded. Instant and untested knowledge trumps the wisdom of the ages.
Western civilization (or any other civilization worth its name) depends on written texts for its preservation, perpetuation, and development. Dead civilizations are studied through archeology, live ones are reanimated by reading books.
[...]
The removal of a sizeable percentage of books published before the 1960s truncates the memory of the present generation. If a significant chunk of interpretations of culture committed to paper is removed from easy circulation, the culture built on these interpretations will eventually wither. This was predicted by Marxists like Antonio Gramsci who wrote in the 1930s that it is not necessary to engineer bloody revolutions to change political systems and affect a transfer of power: it is enough to change culture to affect such a change. The massive removal of old books from university libraries is a small step in this direction. While many steps have to be taken to bring Gramsci�s vision to fruition, one should not ignore the small steps.''
I agree; the 'small steps' often go unnoticed but they are not insignificant.
Labels: Big Government, Books, Censorship, Congress, Freedom Of Thought, Libraries, Orwellian, Political Correctness
0 comment Monday, November 17, 2014 | admin
At Steve Sailer's blog, following a post called The Ennui of the Left, there was one brief comment that caught my attention among a number of interesting comments.
That very prolific commenter, 'Anonymous', said this:
Steve, you're so wrong about post-WWII USSR. It was culturally conservative in a million ways. Its death was a giant victory for leftism - for gay rights, loose sexual morals, drugs, feminism, violent crime, ugly modernist art, etc. across a huge part of the globe.
Pre-WWII USSR was indeed leftist. It's ignorant to confuse them.'
It's pretty obvious to most thinking people on the right that we (the West) did not really 'win the Cold War', as the triumphalist rhetoric on the mainstream right still boasts. The mythology is that when Reagan said 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' that Communism sort of crumbled, or melted like the Wicked Witch doused with water, and before we knew it, the Berlin wall was down and the Eastern bloc countries were 'free.'
I've alluded before on this blog to the curious fact that the old Soviet communists were very prudish and very traditional in many respects on social/sexual matters. They may have been lenient in regard to making abortion widely available, and they may have been very 'feminist' in that they put more women into leadership positions, but in regard to culture they were much more conservative than we in the Western ''free'' countries were, even in the 1950s. The 1950s, remember, was the decade most American leftists describe as hyper-conservative and repressed.
I've told the story before of a news event that was reported when I was a child, when Soviet leader Khrushchev visited America. He was given a tour of a movie set, where the movie 'Can-Can' was being filmed. He disapproved of what he saw, commenting that ''the face of humanity is more beautiful than its backside.'' That was his broken-clock moment; he was right on that point. Nowadays, our entertainment media and pop culture are more than ever fixated on people's 'backsides' and on titillating entertainment and 'art'. We've gone from relatively tame scenes, like the one Khrushchev witnessed, to Lady Gaga and beyond.
The old Soviet Union disapproved of rock'n roll and jazz, and promoted classical and folk music. At the time, it seemed that our country perversely decided that if the Russians disliked these things and censored them, then they must be good, and that in defiance of our enemies, we would wallow in the things they tut-tutted about. I see the same sort of thing in regard to Islam's prudishness. Many 'conservatives' see our Western cultural and social decadence as an act of defiance against Islam, and a statement of 'freedom.' I think we have gotten a little confused here.
The anonymous commenter at Sailer's blog refers to 'ugly modernist art' which the Soviet Union banned. This piece describes in detail how the arts were censored and how the Soviet State made sure that all art had the correct political message, delivered in the correct style.
Works of art were censored for the following reasons:
"...* political reasons (criticism of the Soviet Union, CPSU, Soviet regime, particular political bodies and figures);
* political unreliability (temporary or permanent) of an artist, whose work was the subject of the publication;
* political unreliability (temporary or permanent) of an author of a publication;
* mentioning an unreliable person, unworthy fact or event in the text unless it was criticized (possible cuttings of the text or plates);
* generally prohibited subject (for instance: unofficial Soviet art);
* propaganda of fascism, violence or terror (horror films belonged to that category);
* pornography (a magic word - none of the censors could ever give a distinct definition of this term in their special vocabulary; the most frequent reason for art publications to become banned as most of the artists, since the ancient times, had made the studies of the nude models);
* themes, subjects, facts, events which caused or might have caused undesirable thoughts, associations or illusions not in favour of the Soviet state.
[...] The criteria for division of art of the past into two categories was quite simple: the work of art should bare or not some peculiar signs of progressiveness, such as themes of labour, struggle for justice, protest against the bourgeois society, pity for suffering, depiction of poor people, social and class struggle. For obvious reasons the mediaeval art, being the art which served the religion, was not worth studying.''
What seems to have happened by the late 1970s when the 'dam burst', as the writer says, was that the censorship seemed to have only whetted the Soviet people's appetite for what was termed 'decadent Western bourgeois' art and ideas. The Russians seem, since the fall of the old regime, to have plunged headlong into that Western decadence.
I remember when the so-called Iron Curtain came down being somewhat mortified by how fast the people seemed to embrace the libertine lifestyle, drugs, promiscuity, and the worst excesses of greed. Obviously they had not really believed in the stringent standards of their regime -- or were they just easily seduced away by rock music, blue jeans, porn, and the lure of easy money?
Just because our enemies hate the decadence they see in our popular culture, that is not justification for our taking pride in it or considering it a good example of 'freedom' as many people do.
But the question has often occurred to me: why was the old left socially and culturally conservative, honoring the best of classic Western art and culture, while the new left, the post-60s left, trashes our artistic and cultural heritage in favor of ugliness and corruption, worshipping the new and hideous rather than the old and aesthetically pleasing?
And now that the old Soviet Union seems to have been degraded culturally and socially, have 'we' won, or have they won? Or have we all lost? It seems that we have embraced some of the worst features of their leftism, and they have absorbed the worst of our ways.
Leftism seems to be able to morph itself into whatever form works best in the target society, like an opportunistic infection.
That very prolific commenter, 'Anonymous', said this:
Steve, you're so wrong about post-WWII USSR. It was culturally conservative in a million ways. Its death was a giant victory for leftism - for gay rights, loose sexual morals, drugs, feminism, violent crime, ugly modernist art, etc. across a huge part of the globe.
Pre-WWII USSR was indeed leftist. It's ignorant to confuse them.'
It's pretty obvious to most thinking people on the right that we (the West) did not really 'win the Cold War', as the triumphalist rhetoric on the mainstream right still boasts. The mythology is that when Reagan said 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' that Communism sort of crumbled, or melted like the Wicked Witch doused with water, and before we knew it, the Berlin wall was down and the Eastern bloc countries were 'free.'
I've alluded before on this blog to the curious fact that the old Soviet communists were very prudish and very traditional in many respects on social/sexual matters. They may have been lenient in regard to making abortion widely available, and they may have been very 'feminist' in that they put more women into leadership positions, but in regard to culture they were much more conservative than we in the Western ''free'' countries were, even in the 1950s. The 1950s, remember, was the decade most American leftists describe as hyper-conservative and repressed.
I've told the story before of a news event that was reported when I was a child, when Soviet leader Khrushchev visited America. He was given a tour of a movie set, where the movie 'Can-Can' was being filmed. He disapproved of what he saw, commenting that ''the face of humanity is more beautiful than its backside.'' That was his broken-clock moment; he was right on that point. Nowadays, our entertainment media and pop culture are more than ever fixated on people's 'backsides' and on titillating entertainment and 'art'. We've gone from relatively tame scenes, like the one Khrushchev witnessed, to Lady Gaga and beyond.
The old Soviet Union disapproved of rock'n roll and jazz, and promoted classical and folk music. At the time, it seemed that our country perversely decided that if the Russians disliked these things and censored them, then they must be good, and that in defiance of our enemies, we would wallow in the things they tut-tutted about. I see the same sort of thing in regard to Islam's prudishness. Many 'conservatives' see our Western cultural and social decadence as an act of defiance against Islam, and a statement of 'freedom.' I think we have gotten a little confused here.
The anonymous commenter at Sailer's blog refers to 'ugly modernist art' which the Soviet Union banned. This piece describes in detail how the arts were censored and how the Soviet State made sure that all art had the correct political message, delivered in the correct style.
Works of art were censored for the following reasons:
"...* political reasons (criticism of the Soviet Union, CPSU, Soviet regime, particular political bodies and figures);
* political unreliability (temporary or permanent) of an artist, whose work was the subject of the publication;
* political unreliability (temporary or permanent) of an author of a publication;
* mentioning an unreliable person, unworthy fact or event in the text unless it was criticized (possible cuttings of the text or plates);
* generally prohibited subject (for instance: unofficial Soviet art);
* propaganda of fascism, violence or terror (horror films belonged to that category);
* pornography (a magic word - none of the censors could ever give a distinct definition of this term in their special vocabulary; the most frequent reason for art publications to become banned as most of the artists, since the ancient times, had made the studies of the nude models);
* themes, subjects, facts, events which caused or might have caused undesirable thoughts, associations or illusions not in favour of the Soviet state.
[...] The criteria for division of art of the past into two categories was quite simple: the work of art should bare or not some peculiar signs of progressiveness, such as themes of labour, struggle for justice, protest against the bourgeois society, pity for suffering, depiction of poor people, social and class struggle. For obvious reasons the mediaeval art, being the art which served the religion, was not worth studying.''
What seems to have happened by the late 1970s when the 'dam burst', as the writer says, was that the censorship seemed to have only whetted the Soviet people's appetite for what was termed 'decadent Western bourgeois' art and ideas. The Russians seem, since the fall of the old regime, to have plunged headlong into that Western decadence.
I remember when the so-called Iron Curtain came down being somewhat mortified by how fast the people seemed to embrace the libertine lifestyle, drugs, promiscuity, and the worst excesses of greed. Obviously they had not really believed in the stringent standards of their regime -- or were they just easily seduced away by rock music, blue jeans, porn, and the lure of easy money?
Just because our enemies hate the decadence they see in our popular culture, that is not justification for our taking pride in it or considering it a good example of 'freedom' as many people do.
But the question has often occurred to me: why was the old left socially and culturally conservative, honoring the best of classic Western art and culture, while the new left, the post-60s left, trashes our artistic and cultural heritage in favor of ugliness and corruption, worshipping the new and hideous rather than the old and aesthetically pleasing?
And now that the old Soviet Union seems to have been degraded culturally and socially, have 'we' won, or have they won? Or have we all lost? It seems that we have embraced some of the worst features of their leftism, and they have absorbed the worst of our ways.
Leftism seems to be able to morph itself into whatever form works best in the target society, like an opportunistic infection.
Labels: Art, Censorship, Communism, Conservatism Anti-Communism, Cultural Conservatism, Cultural Marxism
0 comment Monday, November 3, 2014 | admin
We knew this was coming. But all the same, it doesn't bode well, for obvious reasons.
THE ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said.
Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.
"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff - the UK and the U.S. working together - the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying.
Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibilty.
"This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Mr Burnham said.
Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said.
[...]
"If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Daily Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."
He said some content should not be available to be viewed.
"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."
[Emphasis mine]
We all know that the interpretations of 'offensive' or 'harmful' or 'hateful' will rest with the liberals and leftists who are now to be in the drivers' seat in Washington, D.C. as of January. And if ''our" government is to work hand-in-hand with the leftist British government, no good can come from that for either country.
Blogs like this one, and many other, far less politically incorrect blogs and forums will be filtered if not removed entirely. It may not happen overnight, but this is the direction in which we are headed.
The politically correct vigilantes will be ever more emboldened to silence anyone who fails to toe the line.
We should be thinking about ways to circumvent this effort to quash free speech. We will have to find alternatives, and I believe where there's a will, there's a way. We will have to find alternative ways to communicate and to speak the truth that needs to be heard.
I'm convinced that one of the first acts of our new overlords will be to pass the 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' laws that they have been itching to push through, but failed to do in the last session. I am convinced that this is a priority for them.
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." - John Adams
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." - Benjamin Franklin
"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time. - Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?" - Judge Learned Hand
'"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth" - quote from protester Arlene Elshinnawy, from the WND article linked above
THE ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said.
Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.
"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff - the UK and the U.S. working together - the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying.
Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibilty.
"This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Mr Burnham said.
Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said.
[...]
"If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Daily Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."
He said some content should not be available to be viewed.
"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."
[Emphasis mine]
We all know that the interpretations of 'offensive' or 'harmful' or 'hateful' will rest with the liberals and leftists who are now to be in the drivers' seat in Washington, D.C. as of January. And if ''our" government is to work hand-in-hand with the leftist British government, no good can come from that for either country.
Blogs like this one, and many other, far less politically incorrect blogs and forums will be filtered if not removed entirely. It may not happen overnight, but this is the direction in which we are headed.
The politically correct vigilantes will be ever more emboldened to silence anyone who fails to toe the line.
We should be thinking about ways to circumvent this effort to quash free speech. We will have to find alternatives, and I believe where there's a will, there's a way. We will have to find alternative ways to communicate and to speak the truth that needs to be heard.
I'm convinced that one of the first acts of our new overlords will be to pass the 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' laws that they have been itching to push through, but failed to do in the last session. I am convinced that this is a priority for them.
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." - John Adams
"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." - Benjamin Franklin
"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while there was still time. - Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no Constitution, no Law, no Court can save it...Where do you stand Citizen?" - Judge Learned Hand
'"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth" - quote from protester Arlene Elshinnawy, from the WND article linked above
Labels: Bloggers, Blogs, Censorship, Cultural Marxism, Free Press, Free Speech, Freedom Of Expression, Hate Speech, Internet, Liberal Intolerance, Liberals
0 comment Friday, October 10, 2014 | admin
The following article was brought to my attention thanks to blogger Matt:
University to students: 'All whites are racist'
A mandatory University of Delaware program requires residence hall students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according to a civil rights group.''
The civil rights group quoted in the article is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or (FIRE), and their news release on the story is here:
Referring to the mandatory re-education program, the 'residence life education program', FIRE says
The University of Delaware�s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students� private beliefs," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional."
The university�s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to "sustainability" door decorations. Students living in the university�s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a "diversity facilitation training" session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that "[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality."
I wonder if some thought I was exaggerating for rhetorical effect when I said at various times. that the PC commissars maintain that 'all whites are racists', with no exceptions. The quote above spells it out: all those of European descent, regardless of 'class, gender, religion, culture, or sexuality' are racists. And since these same leftists believe that to be a 'racist' is to be a vile person, worthy of losing the right to free speech, or livelihood, this kind of blanket condemnation should be distressing to all European-descended people.
The methods used are totalitarian:
At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university�s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an "oppressed" social group, and taking action by advocating for a "sustainable world."
In the Office of Residence Life�s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as "treatments."
In the old Soviet Union, we know that people who were political dissenters were often diagnosed as mentally ill and sent off to re-education camps. There have been 'experts' cited in recent years who have declared 'racism' to be a mental disorder. Can we see where this is going?
The WorldNetDaily article gives us more details on the program:
...people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination�.'"
The education program also notes that "reverse racism" is "a term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege." And "a non-racist" is called "a non-term," because, the program explains, "The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift the responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called 'blaming the victim')."
[Emphasis mine]
So it's hopeless to protest your innocence; you are guilty by virtue of your genetics, and there is no defense, no appeal. Guilty.
In googling the phrase 'all racists' I came across a link to some kind of college organization against 'racism'.
I would link to it, but I personally don't want the people who created the site following the link to my blog and leaving their droppings in my comment section. But here is an example of their 'solutions' with the title 'A Final Solution to the Problem of Racism in America. They call racism a 'cancer' and say that it is everywhere in America, and there is no escape. So the solutions might be
* Teach them to read.
* Make them travel. Mark Twain said, "Travel cures prejudice." Maybe getting them out of those little white towns and trailer parks would do them some good.
* Deport them to the Caucasus mountains.
* Force them to take a bath every day until they renounce racism.
* Put them on an island. Then they could be happy hating each other forever.
* Require them to attend college classes at state universities -- their failures will instill humility since non-whites will always outperform them.
* Euthenize [sic] all mentally deficient racists (per their own Nazi doctrine) -- this will eliminate over half of them.
* Lock them in a football stadium with lots of machine guns and alcohol.
* Send the Aryans back to India.
* Put them in the boxing ring and let them prove their superiority over blacks.
* Sterilize all racists them so they don't breed back into the population and pollute the human gene pool.
* Fine their mothers for littering society with white trash. If their fathers can be identified and caught, jail them.
* Make them take an IQ test and euthenize [sic] those who flunk.
* Make them wear yellow swastikas on their clothes, confiscate their property, and confine them to walled-in ghettoes or send them to work camps.
* Make them slaves for 400 years so that they understand the evil that they have done.''
All the spelling and grammar errors are left as is, which is a good illustration of the mentality of these people.
If these 'students' who cannot spell and write (or think) are white, they are a sorry example of white self-racism, and if they are 'diverse' which they probably are, since colleges worship diversity above all else, then they are proof that European-descended people are not the only 'racists'. And to think: the people who wrote the above will likely be 'leaders' of tomorrow, armed with their bogus college degrees.
And here, from Blogger News Network, commentary on a CNN poll which showed that 'Americans all Racists'
From the CNN story:
University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.
"We�ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don�t recognize," Dovidio said.
He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.
"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.
That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations. ''
University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.
"We�ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don�t recognize," Dovidio said.
He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.
"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.
That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations. ''
We all know this rhetoric; we've been subjected to it non-stop for the last 40 or 45 years. You who are younger are lucky; you have not heard it as many times as some of us have. And unfortunately those who have grown up under the politically correct regime know no other way of thinking, unless somehow they have been kept out of the mainstream or raised by dissenting parents who don't conform to the orthodoxy.
And how do we have a dialogue with people who think we are all racist, and hence evil? The answer: we don't. It doesn't happen. The only thing the other side has to contribute to any debate is slanders, insults, and hatred masquerading as anti-hate zeal.
I've mentioned before that I have an ultra-liberal friend, with whom I used to be quite close, and that since we've grown apart politically, our friendship has suffered. Ideally, among good friends, we should be able to discuss these things honestly and reach some understanding, but it doesn't happen. We tend to avoid the subjects on which we disagree vehemently, and I suspect my friend thinks I have become deluded and that I will come around to the correct way of thinking eventually.
But when I have brought up issues like this, thinking that, as a reasonable person, an educated person, my friend should be able to discuss things reasonably, she reacts irrationally. If I point out a story like this one, in which leftism is showing its derangement and totalitarianism, she merely rationalizes it away. Oh, it's just a few people in some obscure place who got carried away; they aren't typical of liberals or leftists. They're just zealots, most liberals don't think like that. Or: 'the right-wing media exaggerates things like that.'
Actually I see the same kinds of rationalizations among the neocons; when faced with a story that conflicts with their programming, they dismiss it as 'the lamestream media lying again.'
So what do we do, if we can't dialogue with these people on the left?
In my ideal universe, we'd be able to separate from them; the divisions between us and them are becoming so profound, and there is no good faith left, nothing much on which we can agree, that separation is the only real answer. Some will tell me I am being unrealistic, but is it realistic to hope we can live in harmony with people who insist we are 'evil racists' and who will do all they can to discredit us and marginalize us, and would send our dissenting young people off to be 're-educated'?
And here's a modest proposal: since we majority Americans have been declared to be universally racist, it might be sensible for those who are immigrating here to seek a destination country which is racism-free, such as another third-world country, because we are told that non-whites cannot be racists; only whites can be. So white countries should be ostracized by all the 'people of color.' Maybe that would "learn" us.
I really don't know what the answer is, but the answer, if any, is surely NOT for us to start denying, or becoming defensive, or attempting to prove how non-racist we are, as many on the mainstream 'right' love to do, and above all, the answer is NOT to go looking under the bed for 'racists' and 'bigots' and expelling them from our midst. Anybody who does that has in essence bought into the beliefs of the left, and has taken on the yoke of political correctness. Anybody who does that is gone over to the other side, whether they realize it or not.
At the very minimum, those of us with college-age sons and daughters should keep them away from these totalitarian campuses, but the trouble is, almost all colleges are infected with leftism, and the pressure to conform is considerable. I suppose if we bring up our children to be independent-minded, with sound values and principles, they might not fall prey to the ideas that are ubiquitous in our institutions of 'higher learning.' But I think it's the exceptional young person who is not swayed by all the leftist propaganda.
But one consolation in this 'we are all racists' nonsense is: if we are all 'racists' then racism is normal. If everybody has a certain innate characteristic, then that characteristic is the norm.
If we are all racists, then the word has no real meaning. How can something which is universal (as the left claims) be worthy of condemnation? Can you re-make human nature, with your sinister 're-education' programs and your witch-hunts?
If gays can claim the 'right' to their sexual preferences because it's inborn (so they claim) then why can't racists claim the right to be as they are, since it's evidently natural?
And one more question: how can purges against 'racists' on these blogs and forums be instituted, if everybody of European descent is racist? If racism disqualifies you from the right to free speech, and if all Europeans are racists, then no European-descended person has a right to freedom of expression. Ban us all. We'd even have to ban ourselves. Just give up and turn ourselves in for re-education.
I still maintain, however, that if we dissented en masse, refusing to go along with the totalitarian left's dictates, how can they enforce their will on the majority of us? It is really only a fairly small percentage of the actual population who impose this kind of nonsense on us; they are in the main a lot of soft, passive-aggressive people who use verbal intimidation and intellectual coercion. If we refuse to go along, what can they do, realistically, to us? They have as much power as we are willing to give them, and no more.
University to students: 'All whites are racist'
A mandatory University of Delaware program requires residence hall students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according to a civil rights group.''
The civil rights group quoted in the article is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or (FIRE), and their news release on the story is here:
Referring to the mandatory re-education program, the 'residence life education program', FIRE says
The University of Delaware�s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students� private beliefs," FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. "The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional."
The university�s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to "sustainability" door decorations. Students living in the university�s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a "diversity facilitation training" session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that "[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality."
I wonder if some thought I was exaggerating for rhetorical effect when I said at various times. that the PC commissars maintain that 'all whites are racists', with no exceptions. The quote above spells it out: all those of European descent, regardless of 'class, gender, religion, culture, or sexuality' are racists. And since these same leftists believe that to be a 'racist' is to be a vile person, worthy of losing the right to free speech, or livelihood, this kind of blanket condemnation should be distressing to all European-descended people.
The methods used are totalitarian:
At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university�s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an "oppressed" social group, and taking action by advocating for a "sustainable world."
In the Office of Residence Life�s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as "treatments."
In the old Soviet Union, we know that people who were political dissenters were often diagnosed as mentally ill and sent off to re-education camps. There have been 'experts' cited in recent years who have declared 'racism' to be a mental disorder. Can we see where this is going?
The WorldNetDaily article gives us more details on the program:
...people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination�.'"
The education program also notes that "reverse racism" is "a term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege." And "a non-racist" is called "a non-term," because, the program explains, "The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift the responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called 'blaming the victim')."
[Emphasis mine]
So it's hopeless to protest your innocence; you are guilty by virtue of your genetics, and there is no defense, no appeal. Guilty.
In googling the phrase 'all racists' I came across a link to some kind of college organization against 'racism'.
I would link to it, but I personally don't want the people who created the site following the link to my blog and leaving their droppings in my comment section. But here is an example of their 'solutions' with the title 'A Final Solution to the Problem of Racism in America. They call racism a 'cancer' and say that it is everywhere in America, and there is no escape. So the solutions might be
* Teach them to read.
* Make them travel. Mark Twain said, "Travel cures prejudice." Maybe getting them out of those little white towns and trailer parks would do them some good.
* Deport them to the Caucasus mountains.
* Force them to take a bath every day until they renounce racism.
* Put them on an island. Then they could be happy hating each other forever.
* Require them to attend college classes at state universities -- their failures will instill humility since non-whites will always outperform them.
* Euthenize [sic] all mentally deficient racists (per their own Nazi doctrine) -- this will eliminate over half of them.
* Lock them in a football stadium with lots of machine guns and alcohol.
* Send the Aryans back to India.
* Put them in the boxing ring and let them prove their superiority over blacks.
* Sterilize all racists them so they don't breed back into the population and pollute the human gene pool.
* Fine their mothers for littering society with white trash. If their fathers can be identified and caught, jail them.
* Make them take an IQ test and euthenize [sic] those who flunk.
* Make them wear yellow swastikas on their clothes, confiscate their property, and confine them to walled-in ghettoes or send them to work camps.
* Make them slaves for 400 years so that they understand the evil that they have done.''
All the spelling and grammar errors are left as is, which is a good illustration of the mentality of these people.
If these 'students' who cannot spell and write (or think) are white, they are a sorry example of white self-racism, and if they are 'diverse' which they probably are, since colleges worship diversity above all else, then they are proof that European-descended people are not the only 'racists'. And to think: the people who wrote the above will likely be 'leaders' of tomorrow, armed with their bogus college degrees.
And here, from Blogger News Network, commentary on a CNN poll which showed that 'Americans all Racists'
From the CNN story:
University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.
"We�ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don�t recognize," Dovidio said.
He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.
"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.
That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations. ''
University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.
"We�ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don�t recognize," Dovidio said.
He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.
"Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways," he said.
That "stealth" discrimination reveals itself in many different situations. ''
We all know this rhetoric; we've been subjected to it non-stop for the last 40 or 45 years. You who are younger are lucky; you have not heard it as many times as some of us have. And unfortunately those who have grown up under the politically correct regime know no other way of thinking, unless somehow they have been kept out of the mainstream or raised by dissenting parents who don't conform to the orthodoxy.
And how do we have a dialogue with people who think we are all racist, and hence evil? The answer: we don't. It doesn't happen. The only thing the other side has to contribute to any debate is slanders, insults, and hatred masquerading as anti-hate zeal.
I've mentioned before that I have an ultra-liberal friend, with whom I used to be quite close, and that since we've grown apart politically, our friendship has suffered. Ideally, among good friends, we should be able to discuss these things honestly and reach some understanding, but it doesn't happen. We tend to avoid the subjects on which we disagree vehemently, and I suspect my friend thinks I have become deluded and that I will come around to the correct way of thinking eventually.
But when I have brought up issues like this, thinking that, as a reasonable person, an educated person, my friend should be able to discuss things reasonably, she reacts irrationally. If I point out a story like this one, in which leftism is showing its derangement and totalitarianism, she merely rationalizes it away. Oh, it's just a few people in some obscure place who got carried away; they aren't typical of liberals or leftists. They're just zealots, most liberals don't think like that. Or: 'the right-wing media exaggerates things like that.'
Actually I see the same kinds of rationalizations among the neocons; when faced with a story that conflicts with their programming, they dismiss it as 'the lamestream media lying again.'
So what do we do, if we can't dialogue with these people on the left?
In my ideal universe, we'd be able to separate from them; the divisions between us and them are becoming so profound, and there is no good faith left, nothing much on which we can agree, that separation is the only real answer. Some will tell me I am being unrealistic, but is it realistic to hope we can live in harmony with people who insist we are 'evil racists' and who will do all they can to discredit us and marginalize us, and would send our dissenting young people off to be 're-educated'?
And here's a modest proposal: since we majority Americans have been declared to be universally racist, it might be sensible for those who are immigrating here to seek a destination country which is racism-free, such as another third-world country, because we are told that non-whites cannot be racists; only whites can be. So white countries should be ostracized by all the 'people of color.' Maybe that would "learn" us.
I really don't know what the answer is, but the answer, if any, is surely NOT for us to start denying, or becoming defensive, or attempting to prove how non-racist we are, as many on the mainstream 'right' love to do, and above all, the answer is NOT to go looking under the bed for 'racists' and 'bigots' and expelling them from our midst. Anybody who does that has in essence bought into the beliefs of the left, and has taken on the yoke of political correctness. Anybody who does that is gone over to the other side, whether they realize it or not.
At the very minimum, those of us with college-age sons and daughters should keep them away from these totalitarian campuses, but the trouble is, almost all colleges are infected with leftism, and the pressure to conform is considerable. I suppose if we bring up our children to be independent-minded, with sound values and principles, they might not fall prey to the ideas that are ubiquitous in our institutions of 'higher learning.' But I think it's the exceptional young person who is not swayed by all the leftist propaganda.
But one consolation in this 'we are all racists' nonsense is: if we are all 'racists' then racism is normal. If everybody has a certain innate characteristic, then that characteristic is the norm.
If we are all racists, then the word has no real meaning. How can something which is universal (as the left claims) be worthy of condemnation? Can you re-make human nature, with your sinister 're-education' programs and your witch-hunts?
If gays can claim the 'right' to their sexual preferences because it's inborn (so they claim) then why can't racists claim the right to be as they are, since it's evidently natural?
And one more question: how can purges against 'racists' on these blogs and forums be instituted, if everybody of European descent is racist? If racism disqualifies you from the right to free speech, and if all Europeans are racists, then no European-descended person has a right to freedom of expression. Ban us all. We'd even have to ban ourselves. Just give up and turn ourselves in for re-education.
I still maintain, however, that if we dissented en masse, refusing to go along with the totalitarian left's dictates, how can they enforce their will on the majority of us? It is really only a fairly small percentage of the actual population who impose this kind of nonsense on us; they are in the main a lot of soft, passive-aggressive people who use verbal intimidation and intellectual coercion. If we refuse to go along, what can they do, realistically, to us? They have as much power as we are willing to give them, and no more.
Labels: Censorship, Cultural Marxism, Freedom Of Speech, Freedom Of Thought, Political Correctness, Re-Education
0 comment Monday, September 29, 2014 | admin
Over at the Confederate Colonel blog, Stephen Clay McGehee has been posting a series of videos produced by the Georgia SCV(Sons of Confederate Veterans) which were to be run on The History Channel as paid ads. Now it appears The History Channel has backed out, following a complaint by a liberal blogger. (I wish I had that much power as a blogger, that a complaint from me would stop a cable network from running ads I don't like.)
I am not surprised. Knowing the slant of The History Channel, I was, rather, surprised that they would accept any ad from a politically incorrect group (especially one Confederate-related.)
I have watched the first couple of videos and they are not offensive; they are well-done, and do not represent 'hate' or any such thing. But they do represent a point of view which, shamefully, is not permitted in this country any longer.
Over at Confederate Colonel, you can watch the ads for yourself on this page.
The History Channel, despite its authoritative and impartial-sounding name, is nothing more than a purveyor of propaganda, much like all the so-called educational channels on TV. I am an avid watcher of factual historical programming, but for some time, The History Channel, like PBS and just about all channels, traffics in political correctness, not facts. For that reason there is no longer TV in this home; life is better and more peaceful without it.
But nonetheless, millions of people still watch TV and obtain much of their ''information'' from it. That is why it is tragic that only one side of ''history'' can be heard, and only one side of the ''news'' is reported.
I am not surprised. Knowing the slant of The History Channel, I was, rather, surprised that they would accept any ad from a politically incorrect group (especially one Confederate-related.)
I have watched the first couple of videos and they are not offensive; they are well-done, and do not represent 'hate' or any such thing. But they do represent a point of view which, shamefully, is not permitted in this country any longer.
Over at Confederate Colonel, you can watch the ads for yourself on this page.
The History Channel, despite its authoritative and impartial-sounding name, is nothing more than a purveyor of propaganda, much like all the so-called educational channels on TV. I am an avid watcher of factual historical programming, but for some time, The History Channel, like PBS and just about all channels, traffics in political correctness, not facts. For that reason there is no longer TV in this home; life is better and more peaceful without it.
But nonetheless, millions of people still watch TV and obtain much of their ''information'' from it. That is why it is tragic that only one side of ''history'' can be heard, and only one side of the ''news'' is reported.
Labels: American History, Biased Media, Censorship, Confederacy, Cultural Marxism, Freedom Of Speech, Political Correctness, Propaganda
0 comment Tuesday, September 16, 2014 | admin
I expect most of you have read Steve Sailer's latest essay at VDare.
It fits very much with the theme we've been discussing here on this blog: the growing intolerance on the right toward anyone who transgresses the holy laws of political correctness.
Sailer notes with considerable disgust that virtually nobody on the 'respectable' right, such as the NRO crowd (with the exception of John Derbyshire) or the army of 'conservative' bloggers at Townhall wrote a word about the recent Watson controversy, despite its considerable import. After all, it is not just a political issue; although the assault on free speech should concern all good Americans, but the Watson story has implications for scientific inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Surely someone should care about that, even if they are not concerned about the political ramifications of the public humiliation of Watson.
Sailer sees in this situation a reflection of the lack of courage and integrity among those on the Right.
The level of intellectual integrity on the Right�let alone courage�is catastrophically lower today than just 13 years ago, when the John O'Sullivan-edited National Review responded to the publication of The Bell Curve by devoting most of its December 5, 1994 issue to an impressive symposium on race and IQ.
In it, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's bestseller was attacked by some, but also stoutly defended by Michael Barone, Michael Novak, James Q. Wilson, Dan Seligman, Arthur Jensen, and Ernest Van den Haag.
Where have you gone, Michael Barone? (Or John O�Sullivan, for that matter).''
In a recent entry on political correctness among conservatives I used the phrase 'the righteous right,' and wondered who had coined that term. Apparently it was Sailer, in the context of the Trent Lott debacle of a few years ago. At that time, I became extremely disillusioned with many in the Republican Party, not only the leadership but many average party members, as they all, as one, attacked Trent Lott and called for his head over his relatively innocuous remarks to Strom Thurmond. At that time, it was evident that political correctness was as much of a religion to many on the right as it is on the left. I found the whole Lott 'scandal' to be dismaying.
So yes, the 'righteous right' has embraced a peculiarly leftist form of 'righteousness'.
If you read the Time article linked above, you will see the liberals at Time lecturing the Republicans about their 'racist' ways, and the Republican response was to scurry to deny their 'racism.' The politically correct instinct in Republicans seems to be a conditioned response to any liberal accusations of bigotry, and the 'conservatives' who respond by conforming to the liberal rules can't seem to see that their eager compliance makes them appear to be deferring to the liberals, acknowledging that the accusations of bigotry are really true.
Sailer advises against apologizing for gaffes, as Lott did to little avail, and as Watson did:
Never apologize for a "gaffe" (i.e., the telling of an unpopular truth).
When you beg forgiveness, the hate-filled jackals just smell your fear and weakness. It excites them, so they pile on. Further, the watching crowd can't tell who's right, so they respect whoever seems the master of the situation at the moment.
In his October 19 response in the U.K. Independent, "To question genetic intelligence is not racism," Watson seemingly tried to be subtle, arguing that there was a difference between inferiority and diversity, then pointing out the Darwinian implausibility that everyone could have evolved to be identical.
Well, swell. But the politically correct don't engage in rational argument. They just hound and bludgeon. So you have to stand your ground.''
Sailer rightly admonishes that those who are hauled up before the PC kangaroo courts stand their ground. Yet there are few who seem able or willing to do this. I agree with Sailer that those among the 'righteous right' are buckling to the left, and failing to defend their own. We are allowing not only our 'side', but truth itself to be routed.
And in the context of the discussion we've been having here about the politically correct neocons, it seems that they have decided to follow the old saying, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'' So now the PC neocon 'right' have taken to acting as part of the PC inquisition on their own, so as to pre-emptively ward off the accusations of the left. It seems they have so internalized the left's PC moralizing that they have themselves begun behaving like the left.
The consequences of this abdication by the 'right' are serious. The truth will be more marginalized and silenced than ever if those on the right, who are supposedly the upholders of the idea of truth and free speech in a morally relativistic, post-modern world, have given up and surrendered.
It fits very much with the theme we've been discussing here on this blog: the growing intolerance on the right toward anyone who transgresses the holy laws of political correctness.
Sailer notes with considerable disgust that virtually nobody on the 'respectable' right, such as the NRO crowd (with the exception of John Derbyshire) or the army of 'conservative' bloggers at Townhall wrote a word about the recent Watson controversy, despite its considerable import. After all, it is not just a political issue; although the assault on free speech should concern all good Americans, but the Watson story has implications for scientific inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Surely someone should care about that, even if they are not concerned about the political ramifications of the public humiliation of Watson.
Sailer sees in this situation a reflection of the lack of courage and integrity among those on the Right.
The level of intellectual integrity on the Right�let alone courage�is catastrophically lower today than just 13 years ago, when the John O'Sullivan-edited National Review responded to the publication of The Bell Curve by devoting most of its December 5, 1994 issue to an impressive symposium on race and IQ.
In it, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's bestseller was attacked by some, but also stoutly defended by Michael Barone, Michael Novak, James Q. Wilson, Dan Seligman, Arthur Jensen, and Ernest Van den Haag.
Where have you gone, Michael Barone? (Or John O�Sullivan, for that matter).''
In a recent entry on political correctness among conservatives I used the phrase 'the righteous right,' and wondered who had coined that term. Apparently it was Sailer, in the context of the Trent Lott debacle of a few years ago. At that time, I became extremely disillusioned with many in the Republican Party, not only the leadership but many average party members, as they all, as one, attacked Trent Lott and called for his head over his relatively innocuous remarks to Strom Thurmond. At that time, it was evident that political correctness was as much of a religion to many on the right as it is on the left. I found the whole Lott 'scandal' to be dismaying.
So yes, the 'righteous right' has embraced a peculiarly leftist form of 'righteousness'.
If you read the Time article linked above, you will see the liberals at Time lecturing the Republicans about their 'racist' ways, and the Republican response was to scurry to deny their 'racism.' The politically correct instinct in Republicans seems to be a conditioned response to any liberal accusations of bigotry, and the 'conservatives' who respond by conforming to the liberal rules can't seem to see that their eager compliance makes them appear to be deferring to the liberals, acknowledging that the accusations of bigotry are really true.
Sailer advises against apologizing for gaffes, as Lott did to little avail, and as Watson did:
Never apologize for a "gaffe" (i.e., the telling of an unpopular truth).
When you beg forgiveness, the hate-filled jackals just smell your fear and weakness. It excites them, so they pile on. Further, the watching crowd can't tell who's right, so they respect whoever seems the master of the situation at the moment.
In his October 19 response in the U.K. Independent, "To question genetic intelligence is not racism," Watson seemingly tried to be subtle, arguing that there was a difference between inferiority and diversity, then pointing out the Darwinian implausibility that everyone could have evolved to be identical.
Well, swell. But the politically correct don't engage in rational argument. They just hound and bludgeon. So you have to stand your ground.''
Sailer rightly admonishes that those who are hauled up before the PC kangaroo courts stand their ground. Yet there are few who seem able or willing to do this. I agree with Sailer that those among the 'righteous right' are buckling to the left, and failing to defend their own. We are allowing not only our 'side', but truth itself to be routed.
And in the context of the discussion we've been having here about the politically correct neocons, it seems that they have decided to follow the old saying, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'' So now the PC neocon 'right' have taken to acting as part of the PC inquisition on their own, so as to pre-emptively ward off the accusations of the left. It seems they have so internalized the left's PC moralizing that they have themselves begun behaving like the left.
The consequences of this abdication by the 'right' are serious. The truth will be more marginalized and silenced than ever if those on the right, who are supposedly the upholders of the idea of truth and free speech in a morally relativistic, post-modern world, have given up and surrendered.
Labels: Censorship, Faux Conservatism, Freedom Of Expression, Political Correctness, Republicans
0 comment Thursday, July 31, 2014 | admin
My previous post on the Bhutto assassination and the 'War on Terror ' seems likely to elicit some of the same kind of ad hominems and childish name-calling as my post of last night, having to do with Ron Paul and the Lincoln/slavery/War Between the States issue.
My patience is at an end; disagree if you must but if name-calling and ad hominems and profanity are the only way you can make your point, then please don't bother. I will edit, delete, or ban as needed.
I recently said I don't want the discourse to be dragged down to that level on this blog; there are lots of places where that kind of thing is routine, but not here on my blog.
My whole reason and purpose for starting this blog was to air some thoughts and ideas that I saw as being excluded from the public discussion and debate. I had seen as much political correctness on the so-called 'right' as on the left, and many of its ardent practitioners are unable or unwilling to even admit that their politics are just another variation of liberalism, albeit in Republican or 'conservative' drag. It is precisely those politically correct 'conservatives' who inspired me to start this blog. If you are one of those PC 'conservatives' then this is a heads-up that you will encounter views here that anger you and probably provoke you to profanity, ad hominem attacks, or snarkiness. I don't intend for this blog to be a combat zone. I intend for it to be a place of civil discussion, preferably among people who agree on some very basic principles. One of the most basic principles here is that political correctness is not tolerated.
Open minds, however, are welcome here; if you are angered or moved to self-righteousness by politically incorrect views, please do us both a favor and move on to one of the many, many politically correct 'right-wing' blogs where your preconceptions won't be challenged or disturbed, and where you won't be offended and angered.
You get what you give on this blog; if you display a civil, grown-up attitude you will receive the same. If you are abusive, combative, and insulting, you will get a cold shoulder and maybe a ban. Such is life.
Thank you for observing my rules of civility and decorum. Those of you who seek honest discussion of conservative, traditionalist, ideas are welcome. Others, you have been informed of what to expect.
My patience is at an end; disagree if you must but if name-calling and ad hominems and profanity are the only way you can make your point, then please don't bother. I will edit, delete, or ban as needed.
I recently said I don't want the discourse to be dragged down to that level on this blog; there are lots of places where that kind of thing is routine, but not here on my blog.
My whole reason and purpose for starting this blog was to air some thoughts and ideas that I saw as being excluded from the public discussion and debate. I had seen as much political correctness on the so-called 'right' as on the left, and many of its ardent practitioners are unable or unwilling to even admit that their politics are just another variation of liberalism, albeit in Republican or 'conservative' drag. It is precisely those politically correct 'conservatives' who inspired me to start this blog. If you are one of those PC 'conservatives' then this is a heads-up that you will encounter views here that anger you and probably provoke you to profanity, ad hominem attacks, or snarkiness. I don't intend for this blog to be a combat zone. I intend for it to be a place of civil discussion, preferably among people who agree on some very basic principles. One of the most basic principles here is that political correctness is not tolerated.
Open minds, however, are welcome here; if you are angered or moved to self-righteousness by politically incorrect views, please do us both a favor and move on to one of the many, many politically correct 'right-wing' blogs where your preconceptions won't be challenged or disturbed, and where you won't be offended and angered.
You get what you give on this blog; if you display a civil, grown-up attitude you will receive the same. If you are abusive, combative, and insulting, you will get a cold shoulder and maybe a ban. Such is life.
Thank you for observing my rules of civility and decorum. Those of you who seek honest discussion of conservative, traditionalist, ideas are welcome. Others, you have been informed of what to expect.
Labels: Blogosphere, Censorship, Freedom Of Speech, Incivility, Political Correctness
0 comment Tuesday, April 29, 2014 | admin
We all know it's happening.
But one of the recent casualties of an apparently new campaign to exclude politically incorrect content is the video to which I linked several posts back, entitled 'Was America Ever a White Nation?' The video was an excerpt from the documentary called A Conversation About Race.
Of course honest conversations about race are still highly taboo in our society, so it's not surprising that some politically correct vigilante reported the video in question.
I view a lot of videos on You Tube, but to be honest, You Tube is a morass of idiocy when it comes to the comment section following the videos. You Tube seems to be the playground of a great many barely literate leftists, most of whom seem to be adolescents, in spirit if not in years. No matter what the content of a video may be, for instance, such an innocuous thing as the carol ''Good King Wenceslas", someone has to leave nasty comments of a political nature. Accusations of 'racism' and 'hate' abound among the misspelled and crude comments which litter the threads.
Personally I haven't registered at You Tube, so I cannot post comments or 'flag' videos as abusive. But it's evident that the many pestilential leftists who post there flag any video they deem as 'hateful' or 'racist.' I wonder how much of this our side does? Perhaps we ought to start being as free with flagging videos as ''offensive'', just as the leftists and multicultists do with anything even remotely favorable to our side and our culture.
I generally feel that debating or arguing with leftists and multicultists is a waste of time and energy, but I do think it would be a good thing if more pro-White, pro-Western people spoke up and left thoughtful and well-phrased comments so that the leftists won't win the day by default.
And as far as the left's wanton complaining and snitching on anything they dislike, it would seem that both sides could play at that game. It might throw a monkey-wrench into the works to start flagging You Tube videos lavishly, especially those which are unfriendly to our people and cause. For too long, the left has shouted everybody else down, and monopolized the public debate on virtually everything. When is our side going to start making a showing?
I grant you, political correctness being the devouring monster that it is, our side will be censored and banned all over the place, but even if comments stand for a short time, they have a chance of being seen by a few, at least. I personally think there's little chance of converting the lost, but there might be people who are vacillating, or who haven't yet really heard both sides fully, who might be open to hearing our side. That goes for other more neutral forums too; we can make our case in a reasonable, civilized way whenever and wherever we can. I used to do a great deal more posting on 'mainstream' forums and boards, but I find I have little time for it these days. Still, I think we need to make our voices heard, and not concede the field to the left everywhere.
But one of the recent casualties of an apparently new campaign to exclude politically incorrect content is the video to which I linked several posts back, entitled 'Was America Ever a White Nation?' The video was an excerpt from the documentary called A Conversation About Race.
Of course honest conversations about race are still highly taboo in our society, so it's not surprising that some politically correct vigilante reported the video in question.
I view a lot of videos on You Tube, but to be honest, You Tube is a morass of idiocy when it comes to the comment section following the videos. You Tube seems to be the playground of a great many barely literate leftists, most of whom seem to be adolescents, in spirit if not in years. No matter what the content of a video may be, for instance, such an innocuous thing as the carol ''Good King Wenceslas", someone has to leave nasty comments of a political nature. Accusations of 'racism' and 'hate' abound among the misspelled and crude comments which litter the threads.
Personally I haven't registered at You Tube, so I cannot post comments or 'flag' videos as abusive. But it's evident that the many pestilential leftists who post there flag any video they deem as 'hateful' or 'racist.' I wonder how much of this our side does? Perhaps we ought to start being as free with flagging videos as ''offensive'', just as the leftists and multicultists do with anything even remotely favorable to our side and our culture.
I generally feel that debating or arguing with leftists and multicultists is a waste of time and energy, but I do think it would be a good thing if more pro-White, pro-Western people spoke up and left thoughtful and well-phrased comments so that the leftists won't win the day by default.
And as far as the left's wanton complaining and snitching on anything they dislike, it would seem that both sides could play at that game. It might throw a monkey-wrench into the works to start flagging You Tube videos lavishly, especially those which are unfriendly to our people and cause. For too long, the left has shouted everybody else down, and monopolized the public debate on virtually everything. When is our side going to start making a showing?
I grant you, political correctness being the devouring monster that it is, our side will be censored and banned all over the place, but even if comments stand for a short time, they have a chance of being seen by a few, at least. I personally think there's little chance of converting the lost, but there might be people who are vacillating, or who haven't yet really heard both sides fully, who might be open to hearing our side. That goes for other more neutral forums too; we can make our case in a reasonable, civilized way whenever and wherever we can. I used to do a great deal more posting on 'mainstream' forums and boards, but I find I have little time for it these days. Still, I think we need to make our voices heard, and not concede the field to the left everywhere.
Labels: Censorship, First Amendment, Freedom Of Expression, Freedom Of Speech, Hate Speech, Thought Crime