Category Archives: Social Commentary

Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Will There Always Be An England?

2 Comments

David Frum reviews a new history.

And this seems related: The rejection of the West:

As the great 15th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun observed, societies that get rich also tend to get soft, both in the physical sense and in the head. Over the past two centuries, Western societies, propelled by the twin forces of technology and capitalist “animal spirits,” have created a diffusion of wealth unprecedented in world history. A massive middle class emerged, and the working class received valuable protections, not only in Europe and America, but throughout parts of the world, notably East Asia, which adopted at least some of the Western ethos.

The current massive movement of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia to Western countries suggests the enduring appeal of this model. After all, people from developing countries aren’t risking their lives to move to North Korea, Russia or China. The West remains a powerful beacon in the “clash of civilizations.”

Yet a portion of these newcomers ultimately reject our culture and, in some cases, seek to liquidate it. They do this in countries where multiculturalism urges immigrants to register as “victims,” and not indulge in Western culture, as did most previous immigrant waves. After all, why assimilate into a culture that much of the cultural elite believes to be evil?

Perhaps the biggest disconnect may involve young immigrants and their offspring, particularly students. Rather than be integrated in some ways into society, they are able, and even encouraged, not to learn about “Western civilization,” which is all but gone from campuses, with barely 2 percent retaining this requirement.

The dominant ideology on college campus – “cultural relativism” – leaves little room for anything other than a nasty take on Western history and culture. Many students, whether of immigrant parentage or descendants of the Mayflower, have only vague appreciation or knowledge of Western civilization, making them highly vulnerable to such pleading. They often go through college now with only the vaguest notion of our history, the writings of the American founders, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, our vast cultural heritage or the fundamental principles of Christianity or, if you will, Judeo-Christianity.

This will not end well.

[Update a while later]

First link was wrong, fixed now. Sorry!

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Exploration Delenda Est

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Not really Christmas related, but I was working on a section of the report about this, and realized that I hadn’t blogged it at the time, a few days ago. Pew Research released an opinion poll, in which they asked “what role the US government should play in advancing space exploration,” in the context of a broader poll asking what the government role should be in a wide range of activities. For “space exploration,” the public was basically split according to Pew, with almost half favoring a government role, and almost half favoring little or none. But there was a crucial assumption in the question: That everyone agreed on what “space exploration” meant.

I think polls like this are meaningless, because the public is so ill informed, and the notion of “space exploration” so (no pun intended) nebulous. Planetary probes? Space mining? Space settlement? Astronomy? The answer is going to depend very much on what the individual thinks that space exploration is. That’s why I’ve declared warfare on the phrase.

Education, Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Social Justice

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…comes to Whoville:

I have been “othered.” I have been mocked and ignored. I have been forced to live in red-lined areas of the community. I have been slandered and slurred and libeled and smeared. I have been treated, quite simply, the way one might treat a “monster.”

The hate ends now. It ends today.

You want your Christmas back? Seriously? The colored lights and the jingtinglers and floobfloobers? The roast beast? The Who Whompers? Want to know what I want back? I want the land your people stole from me. I want an awareness of exactly how I’ve suffered for the past two centuries. I want an acknowledgment that your Who Privilege has perpetuated a system in which people like me have been kept down (ironically by being exiled above) and forced to accept and use the language of oppression.

Finally.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

The Muslim Hum

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David Solway has thoughts on living with it:

Our electrician is a fundamentally decent man, as are probably the majority of his fellow citizens whose views are shaped by skewed reporting and yellow journalism, and who share the same erroneous beliefs. Moreover, many do not enjoy sufficient disposable leisure to research the topics and issues on which they vote. I suspect that even if they did, however, they lack the interest, desire and will to educate themselves, to acquire a historical perspective and a grasp of the less obvious details that ultimately impinge on their well-being. Vigilance is a desideratum of informed citizenship.

Even more dispiriting, many do not want to hear the Muslim hum for what it is, instead attributing it to other sources or re-interpreting it as something it is not. Perhaps the hum is only an auditory hallucination or, for those with ears differently attuned, the hum is “really” a sweet and appealing melody. Robert Spencer recounts a recent instance of such a convenient transposition, involving a young woman affiliated with Georgetown University’s Saudi-funded Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. She was photographed at a Washington demonstration carrying a sign reading: “I’m a Christian and I LOVE the Quran.” The woman presumably believes, Spencer comments, “that Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, who was crucified and rose from the dead for the salvation of the human race. Yet she is professing love for a book that not only denies all of that, but also insists that Christians are accursed, vile beings who should be waged war against until they submit to the hegemony of a group that believes differently.”

This may be an unaccommodating thing to say, but what one tends to find among the temporizers is a particularly daunting combination of ignorance, stupidity and self-infatuation. Such people do not want to recognize the peril before them since that would require the impulse to think, which is always hard, and the courage to act, which is never easy. Meanwhile, it’s obvious that ear mufflers won’t work against the Muslim detonations. Living beside a construction site is bad enough; living in a destruction site is infinitely worse.

Europe is learning this the hard way.

[Update a couple minutes later]

From early in the year, but related: Islamaphobia is a myth:

“Islamophobia is a code word for mainstream European elites’ fear of their own populations, of their native hordes, whom they imagine to be unenlightened, prejudiced, easily led by the tabloid media, and given to outbursts of spite and violence.”

Yes.

[Update late morning]

The perils of Islamic apologetics: “…it’s not my job to make Islam look good, or to argue that Islam “is a religion of peace,” when the reality is more complicated.”

You don’t say.