Category Archives: Social Commentary

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Grace And Dignity After Charleston

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Thoughts from Jonah Goldberg:

There are few subjects that ignite more casual, uninformed bigotry and condescension from elites in this nation than Dixie. “Practically the whole region has rejected nearly everything that’s good about this country and has become just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment,” the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky wrote last year.

How then to explain the tens of thousands of South Carolinians, white and black, marching in unity across the Ravenel Bridge on Sunday night? Did the city bus in decent Northerners?

The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins glibly asserts that “the Confederate battle flag is an American swastika, the relic of traitors and totalitarians, symbol of a brutal regime, not a republic.”

If it were left to me, I would take the flag down (for the reasons South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley laid out Monday). But this kind of cheap moral preening is galling. Is it really too much for people to muster the moral imagination that the issue isn’t nearly as simple as that?

A November poll of South Carolinians found that 61 percent of blacks wanted it down. That means nearly 4 in 10 blacks felt differently. Are they deluded? Are they the moral equivalent of self-loathing Jews, happy to live under a swastika?

Bigotry against white Christian southerners isn’t just the only acceptable one; it’s almost mandatory. And it largely comes from people who embrace and vote for the historical and traditional (and current) party of racism.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Language Of Leftists

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Yes, they do talk differently, and duplicitously:

…here’s another way to look at the results. Liberals talk about politics in language that appeals to our primal socialist instincts, developed on the savanna when we belonged to small clans of hunter-gatherers who really did look out for their kin. Conservatives discuss politics in language that reflects modern reality: socialism doesn’t work in groups larger than a clan, because people do not behave selflessly when they belong to a large group of unrelated strangers. Liberals believe in what the economist Daniel Klein calls “The People’s Romance,” but that fallacy has been exposed by Adam Smith, de Toqueville and Darth Vader, among others.

When liberals say that “government is the word we give to the things we choose to do together,” they score high on affiliation, and some of them may even believe government is one big happy collaboration among equals. But conservatives know that philosophy just means giving one small group of people in the capital more power to boss and coerce the rest of us.

Yes. I think this also related to Jonathan Haidt’s thesis.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

How Republics Die

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My thoughts on the most recent judicial atrocities, over at PJMedia.

[Update later afternoon]

Some thoughts from Randy Barnett on “judicial restraint” and Republican judicial appointments.

I know it sounds crazy, but I want judges to follow the Constitution, not the tyrannical majority. I also want them to overturn crap decisions. Stare decisis my ass.

[Update a little while later]

Should we make Justices accountable to the voters?

It seems like a bad idea to me. I agree with Cruz’s diagnosis of the problem, but not his remedy. I think that one of the reasons that impeachment is so toothless is the original wording: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The Founders had a very clear view of what that meant, but most people today do not, as we discovered during the Clinton impeachment trial. The only successful impeachments and removals I can think of occurred in the context of gross and blatant corruption (Alcee Hastings, who was later re-elected), or actual criminality. The other part of the problem is that, while they were adamantly opposed to political parties and made no Constitutional provision for them whatsoever, they perhaps didn’t anticipate how difficult they would make impeachment (even though court appointments are in theory non-partisan).

I think a better solution might be to amend the Constitution to simply modernize the grounds for impeachment. For instance, “…or, in violation of their oath of office, persistent indifference to the Constitution and the rule of law.”

Who could argue with that? It would be quite entertaining to watch Democrats attempt to argue that office holders shouldn’t have to uphold their oath of office. And if it passed, it would force impeachment trials to actual discuss those arcane concepts.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is sort of similar to proposals to rein in the government by adding the words “and this time we really mean it” to the 9th and 10th amendments against encroachments by the flawed interpretations of the Commerce Clause. It would be a “this time we really mean it” to simply following the Constitution and the rule of law.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Racism In America

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90% of it comes from the Democrats and the Left.

Yes. And it’s always been the case, from the times of slavery, through Reconstruction, and Jim Crow, right up through today.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Why do we continue to honor the racist Woodrow Wilson? He was a Democrat, and the first arguably fascist president. And his views were probably influenced by the anti-Enlightenment pro-slavery screeds of Calhoun and Fitzhugh.

[Friday-morning update]

Whitewashing the Democrats’ racist history. With (as always) the aid of the media, either from ignorance or partisanship, or both.

[Bumped]

Business, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Why Apple Pulled Civil War Games From Its App Store

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Because it was afraid of the Internet:

No rational person would complain that there were Civil War sims. No sensible person would believe that society would be improved by demanding their removal. No emotionally stable person could think that they were safer now because someone, somewhere, would not get updates to a game they purchased that allowed them to fight as the Union Army but contained the sight of the Confederate flag. Anyone who would believe these things is tethered to reality by a frayed strand of dental floss, and while they may live in a comfy bubble where everyone believes the same things and has at least two friends who are doing very important work in the field of instructional graffiti, most people are stable enough to resist the siren call of the Stars and Bars, even in the form of a picture on a phone.

But. The loud people may complain. The company would have to explain. An explanation would be seen as a justification.

Of course there are nuances to this; Apple is working with developers to use a different, earlier flag, according to some reports. Because that’s the issue, right? Finding an acceptable flag to represent a slave state? As I noted elsewhere, the app store still has a game that lets you simulate the USSR, including an in-app purchase that lets you fine-tune your oppression settings. One could say this is okay because the USSR was an equal-opportunity killer, just as the repression settings in “Tropico” are hunky and / or dory because you’re putting the screws to your own people. If that’s the case, then they have decided that American Slavery is not only a unique historical event, but something whose magnitude and uniqueness sets it apart from every other act of state oppression and governmental violation of human rights. The enslavement of an entire population is not offensive, per se, because it’s color-blind.

I mean, sure, go ahead, make that argument. And if that’s the case, then my Roman Slave Merchant Sim should get brisk approval, because the Romans didn’t care who they enslaved, and also had the option to buy your way out. They practically invented the in-app purchase, in a way.

Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Senator Gillibrand

5 Comments

She thinks there is no such thing as an innocent man being falsely accused:

She’s suggesting that the criminal justice system isn’t easy enough for accusers. Police and juries won’t throw someone in jail based on nothing but an accusation. Therefore, a kinder, gentler justice system needs to exist to do just that. It is that kind of thinking that has prompted more than 70 male students to sue their universities after being expelled and treated like criminals without evidence — and sometimes with evidence that points to a false accusation.

Ashe Schow is doing yeowoman’s work in continuing to spotlight these Kafkaesque anti-male fascists.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Era Of Big Progressivism

…is over.

As I’ve often noted, these people are neither liberal, or progressive. They don’t believe in freedom of expression, they don’t believe in freedom of contract, they don’t believe in freedom of conscience, they don’t believe in liberty, period. They are racist fascist leftists, as they’ve always been, and I will continue to fight to take back the language.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s a great example: “Shut up,” he explained.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Fainting-Couch Feminists

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A new video from Christina Hoff Sommers on how they threaten freedom:

I recently encountered fainting couchers at Oberlin College and Georgetown University. I visited both campuses to give talks on the need to reform feminism and correct exaggerated victim statistics. In the past, activist students who disagreed with me came to my lectures to spar and debate. Today, they issue trigger warnings and accuse me of giving them PTSD. At both Oberlin and Georgetown, activists organized safe spaces were where students could flee if they were panicked by my arguments. While I spoke at Oberlin, 35 students and a therapy dog sought refuge in a safe room. (I feel badly that I triggered a dog.)

Clearly, she is history’s greatest monster.