Some notes on Charles Murray. Substack latest.
Includes a comment by 'Jacques,' a credentialed philosopher who dare not appear under his real name in these race-delusional and totalitarian times.
The Republic is collapsing into a police state. Here is another bit of evidence of how the totalitarian state can and will mercilessly crush anyone it wants to for any reason it can fabricate. In this case a harmless January 6th trespasser is labelled an 'insurrectionist' and a 'terrorist' and sentenced to prison. He committed suicide. Propagate the video.
Here is another telling scrap of evidence: The National Geographic Magazine, founded in 1888 in order to further the spread of knowledge, and for more than a century its own entity, is now owned by Disney, a woke entertainment company. How far we've fallen.
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Sunday, August 06, 2023 at 07:29 PM
Police state indeed:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/democrats_are_dancing_the_totalitarian_twostep.html
But we are answerable to our Creator, and not the government.
Save your soul.
Steel yourself. Bad stuff is coming.
Posted by: Joe Odegaard | Monday, August 07, 2023 at 07:44 AM
Thanks for the link, Joe.
You are right about the soul.
We fight on, here below, as long as we can, as best we can, in the twilight of our powers, until our earthly tenure comes to an end, all the while looking beyond and hoping beyond this miserable and ultimately hopeless world.
Posted by: BV | Monday, August 07, 2023 at 04:44 PM
It took him a while, but Murray came to see that left-wing identity politics is "toxic." (6) I would add that the same goes for the identity politics of the alternative right.
I would distinguish the left-wing version of identity politics from the alternative right version: I think they are substantively different (rather than say, being essentially the same ideology, but just swapping favored identities).
In the left-wing version, the collective identity permitted to favored minorities is only a tool to further the ultimate goal of radical individual autonomy by destroying any collective identity that the dominant majority and culture might have. Consider: what is the justification given for the existence of a collective identity on the part of some ‘victim’ minority? The justification is not fundamentally so that its members can preserve their own culture and honor their ancestors (even if this is sometimes also encouraged); rather, the justification is their very status as members of an ‘oppressed’ class: their collective identity is needed to challenge and subvert the white racism of the oppressor class, because this white racism is an obstacle to the freedom and equality of minorities. In fact, the very existence of such oppressed classes is often regarded as having been entirely socially constructed for the purposes of exploitation by the white oppressor class. The rationale given for the legitimacy of collective identities for favored minorities is almost entirely a negative one. Wokeness pays lip service to the preservation of minority cultures, all while destroying them with its universal acid.
The type of identify politics favored by the alternative right, in contrast, has positive content: the collective identity of whites, for example, is regarded as a positive good. Its purpose is not fundamentally instrumental as a means of destroying some other identity or institution, as with the left-wing variety, but is regarded as an end in itself that is worth preserving and promoting for its own sake. As a collective identity that transcends the individuals who comprise it, it also helps provide a setting for our lives and gives it context, and so helps us to understand ourselves and our place in the world and our relations to others and our responsibilities.
In fact, the alternative right goes about as far as you can with this line of thinking, by claiming that the collective identity of whites is not merely a positive good, but is the ultimate positive good, to which all other goods ought to be subordinated.
Posted by: Ian M. | Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 07:49 PM