Maverick Philosopher

Twitter and the War of the Oligarchs

Geoff Shullenberger at Compact:

Those fretting about the world’s wealthiest man gaining control over their favorite site have scarcely objected to the fact that the media outlets, think tanks, NGOs, and universities they work for comprise a patronage network bankrolled by a handful of other billionaires like eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Musk has done a service by exposing the function Twitter performs for this alliance of oligarchs and the professional classes, which Michael Lind terms “Progressivism, Inc.”

From the beginning, Twitter has been central to the agenda of this alliance, though that agenda looked very different only a decade or so ago. During the Arab Spring, for example, Western journalists, NGOs, and politicians rhapsodized about the democratizing potential of Twitter in much the same terms as Musk today. Indeed, many of the same reporters, bloggers, and columnists who now inveigh against Musk’s support for free speech hailed how free expression, enabled by platforms like Twitter, could bring down dictatorships.

At this earlier moment, Progressivism, Inc. saw social media as an opportunity to spread its values abroad: The free flow of information was seen as a way of attenuating the power of foreign governments in favor of a loose affiliation of Western state entities, NGOs, and media outlets that sought to expand their influence. More recently, in the face of the populist threats that emerged around 2016 at home, the same alliance has deployed censorship to reassert its hegemony. Thus, while elite ideological opinion on free speech has reversed, what remains constant is the attempt to control the circulation of information in favor of certain interests.

Both Musk and those who fear him position themselves as the defenders of democracy. In reality, the episode reveals how vacuous the term has become. In the final analysis, the conflict over Twitter is a war between rival factions of oligarchs. A less censorious Twitter is desirable in itself, as is the emergence of any meaningful challenge to the conformity that stifles cultural and intellectual life. But a less censorious internet also risks obscuring how power is really exercised in a world where the so-called public square is a patchwork of privatized ideological fiefdoms.

Rush Limbaugh (1951-2021) and the Depth of Disagreement

As a philosopher, I am more interested in the nature of disagreement than in the particular things we disagree about. Why should our disagreements be so bitter and protracted?  But the particular bones of contention are fascinating too. At the moment, there is wild disagreement over the assessment of Rush Limbaugh's remarkably influential  career.  Here's a little sample. Andrew Klavan:

I liked Rush Limbaugh. I only turned on his show out of curiosity, so help me. But to my surprise, I did not find him evil in the least. He was just talking sense, really. Freedom. Constitutional limits on government. What was wrong with that?

Plus he was funny too, really funny. How could I not be delighted at the fear and loathing he inspired in the great and good? During my long absence from America, the great and good had become such smug, small-minded, and provincial little people, it was a guilty pleasure to watch them writhe on the flame he lit beneath them. For decades, feminists had called men “pigs.” Now Rush called them “feminazis,” and they threw their aprons over their faces and sobbed about his lack of civility. For decades, race-mongers had blamed an innocent generation of whites for a history that they hadn’t made, and now Rush mocked the mongers with wicked impressions, and declared it was time for black Americans to get on board the freedom train with their white fellow citizens.

It was beautiful. Courageous. The kind of radio magic I’d grown up with. And it changed me, or at least helped me change. Rush gave a joyful voice to the new thoughts I didn’t even know I’d had.

On the other side, Zack Beauchamp:

Obituaries for talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday at the age of 70, have frequently described him as a “conservative provocateur.” This is technically accurate but euphemistic, akin to calling Bashar al-Assad a “controversial leader.” Limbaugh’s stock in trade was bigotry and offense; his career-long defining trait was a willingness to channel the conservative id in unusually blunt and crude terms.

But I'll give the last word to Tammy Bruce:

Rush was not a monster, he wasn’t evil, he did not mean people harm, he wasn’t a bigot, or any of the other smears lobbed against him by my leftist associates. I liked him very much, and while we disagreed on many things (then) he was nothing has he had been painted 4/ 

In my conversations with him, we talked about the issues and despite the disagreements, he also took time to give me advice about hosting, style, connecting w the audience, etc. He encouraged me and gave me advice that made a huge difference in my career… 5/ 

He approached me and everyone else as separate individual worthy of respect and with a desire to help and inspire. Regardless of the fact that I stood for everything he stood against. It was a generosity of spirit you would never see on the left 6/ 

The impact of realizing that I’d been lied to about Rush was significant, but that as a conservative he represented more of what I felt was valuable & important was a revelation. He made it possible to even consider that which is what made him so dangerous to the left 7/ 

During this time as an activist leftist, it was talk radio, the audience, & meeting Rush Limbaugh that was the undeniable trigger making it possible for me to rethink my alliances & eventually leave the leftist establishment 8/ 

It wasn’t just Rush, but I’d also been lied to about conservatives in general, realizing that by speaking with callers every day who were conservative & responding fairly & w curiosity to my arguments on the air. Rush made that medium, & experience, possible 9/ 

My leftist associates begged me not to go into talk radio. I eventually realized they were so opposed because of what I would learn. That leftist effort to deny access to ideas & info continues w even more vitriol & punishment for those who dare to challenge leftist lies 10/ 

Rush created the potential of the medium, and set the tone for entertainment, analysis & education. Honest conversations open to everyone is anathema to the left which is why they’re obsessed w creating fear & the cancel culture 11/ 

The ugliness of the left will be seen throughout today & the days to come in response to the death of Rush, an American titan & defender of conservative values. The left is ugly & horrible but it is exactly their nature & should serve to remind you the importance of our fight 12/ 

The good news is, Rush not only changed our lives by helping us understand the imperative of freedom & generosity, but he now serves as an even more essential example for all of us 13/ 

Rush may be gone, but now it’s up to all of us to continue his commitment to our great nation. Thank you sir, for the time you took with a arrogant & smug LA leftist feminist, one of the millions of lives you changed for the better.

Cancel the New York Times!

Richard Samuelson, Claremont Review of Books

Out-Foxing the Feculent Purveyors of Race Madness and Leftist Lunacy

Fox News is destroying the opposition. Hats off to Tucker Carlson for his hard-hitting commentary and civil courage in the teeth of vicious opposition from Democrat-leftist scum. And note the demographic in which Carlson dominates. This is a good sign indeed.  True, the elderly, who tend to list in a conservative direction,  are dying off.  But their passing will not be the passing of conservatism and common sense: young 'uns will step up. And as they age they will grow in wisdom and become increasingly angry at how they have been cheated.

As was the case in total viewership, Fox News led by Carlson, dwarfed the competition in the 25-54 demo.

1. Tucker Carlson Tonight (791,000), Fox News
2. Hannity (754,000), Fox News
3. Special Report (668,00), Fox News
4. The Five (655,000), Fox News
5. The Ingraham Angle (655,000), Fox News
6. The Story (603,000), Fox News
7. Cuomo Prime Time (587,000), CNN
8. Anderson Cooper 360 (568,000), CNN
9. CNN Tonight (524,000), CNN
10. Erin Burnett OutFront (502,00), CNN

'Journalists' of the Garbage Cult Media

Here:

These people are all part of a garbage cult, a garbage cult where not a single one of them has the moral courage to come out and tell the truth… And here is the truth…

On Friday, after Trump expressed his own personal optimism and sense of hope about chloroquine, a malaria drug that may or may not (and the president was clear it may not work) mitigate the coronavirus, Alexander decided to debate and argue with the president:

The Media Have Damaged the Country Irreparably

David Harsanyi:

For the past two years, a large swath of the media engaged in a mass act of self-deception and partisan groupthink. Perhaps it was Watergate envy, or bitterness over Donald Trump’s victory, or antagonism towards Republicans in general—or, most likely, a little bit of all the above. But now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his report on Russian collusion, it’s clear that political journalists did the bidding of those who wanted to delegitimize and overturn Trump’s election.

While bad behavior from partisan sources should be expected, the lack of skepticism from self-appointed unbiased journalists has been unprecedented. Any critical observer could see early on that Trump-era partisan newsroom culture had made journalists susceptible to the deception of those peddling expedient stories. Our weekly bouts of Russia hysteria all sprung from one predetermined outcome: the president was in bed with Vlad Putin.

Read it all.

Is President Trump Mounting an Assault on the Fourth Estate?

Obviously not. He is merely punching back at the contemptible pseudo-journalists, feculent with crypto-commie bias, who head up the lamestream media outlets. 

When leftists accuse us of something you can be sure that they are doing that very thing. Call it political projection. The greatest threats to free speech at the present time emanate from so-called 'liberals.'

If  'liberal' is used in the classical way, we conservatives are the true liberals.

In the end, hundreds of papers telling us how bad Trump has been for press freedom may make all those involved feel good for a day, but it won't move the needle one bit. It may even have an opposite effect than the one intended. 

Yes, calling the press the "enemy of the people" is way over the top, and obviously wrong. But Trump's rhetoric is nothing compared to Obama's actions in terms of press treatment. 

The Left is deeply destructive and they need to be opposed. No Republican except Trump has the cojones for the job. If he goes too far, well that is what happens in a war. And it is a war. A war for the soul of America. 

Once Great Newspaper Becomes Radicals' Rag of Record

Of course, the Grey Lady has been slouching left for a long time now. Her Op-Ed pages have gone from being piss-poor to being positively feculent. David Brooks, who I once respected, is increasingly in the grip of Trump Derangement Syndrome. And he was one of the sane ones.

Sarah Jeong is a miserable twerp of no significance. Her hiring, however, is a major event signaling an institutional legitimation of deviant and destructive behavior. Things should prove interesting in the months and years to come. You are well-advised to keep your powder dry.

What we have here is  a struggle for the soul of America. Or is that too dramatic a way of putting it?

The New York Times has embraced the bigotry of identity politics. 

See also: Why Racism Begets More Racism

 

Honky-Hater Hired by The New York Times

How low can they go?

The Trouble with Tucker

The trouble with the Tucker Carlson show is that the host is insufficiently judicious as to the number and type of leftists he invites onto his program.  No doubt he is striving to be "fair and balanced," but what typically happens is that Carlson asks some reasonable question of the leftist guest, which the latter evades in order let loose with his reliably incoherent canned spiel, about,  say, all those thousands of people roaming around without photo ID who are 'disenfranchised' -- sneer quotes! -- by reasonable ID requirements at polling places. Tucker tries without success to bring the knucklehead back to the topic, voices are raised, they talk over each other, and I surf away to a Seinfeld re-run. 

These shouting matches are totally unproductive. Besides, they elevate my blood pressure. But when I return from Seinfeld to hear the brilliant and consummately witty analysis of Mark Steyn, or the less brilliant, but solid, contribution of my favorite gun-totin' lesbian, the charming Tammy Bruce, then it is all worthwhile and the old B.P. returns to 'within range.'

Of course, there are people who like to watch unproductive shouting matches. They like to see people fight. So it may well be that ratings would decline if my suggestion were followed. 

Tucker needs to realize that the age of productive dialog with political opponents is over in American politics.  Ours is the age of post-consensus politics. Destructive leftists don't need talk, they need defeat. Let's hope it can be achieved politically without resort to, God forbid, the 2A solution. But as every patriot knows, the 2A ain't about hunting. 

I now hand off to Bruce Thornton, Ridicule, not Reasoned Debate, is the Best Medicine for Political Cults.

'Progressive' Hate, 'Progressive' Projection

The Bad Hate the Good: The Southern Poverty Law Center vs. Prager University:

The SPLC smears individuals and groups it differs with by labeling them as some form of "hater": "racist," "white supremacist," "extremist" and the like. That it is cited and even relied upon by The New York Times, Facebook, Amazon, Google, CNN and others, and that Apple gave the organization a million dollars, is testimony to the moral state of mainstream media and corporate culture in America today.

[. . .]

Any organization that labels Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- the extraordinary Somali-American woman who devotes her life to fighting for oppressed women, especially in the Islamic world -- an "extremist," as the SPLC has done, is not a moral organization. No wonder it just agreed to pay Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz $3.4 million and issued a retraction for smearing him as an "anti-Muslim extremist."

This kind of behavior should surprise no one. Since Stalin labeled Trotsky, the ideological leader of Soviet communism, a "fascist," the left (not liberals, to whom the left is as opposed as it is conservatives) has libeled its opponents. Without lying about its opponents, there would be no left.

Read it all.

A 'Fake News' Smear

Donald Trump baits the so-called journalists of the lamestream media with his largely, but not entirely, true accusations of 'fake news' and what do the 'journalists' do? They bite. They take the bait. 

In their TDS-driven rage they verify the accusations by violating their own professional standards. Well, keep it up knuckleheads! You are destroying what is left of your credibility.

By the way, when John McCain and others accuse Trump of attacking the Fourth Estate they are merely flailing about in frustration.  Trump is rendering a salutary service by punching back effectively at the patently biased and leftward-leaning mainstream/lamestream media.

Trump's genius is that he knows how so to needle them that they show their true colors. Or as Dan Bongino rather less delicately put it the other night, "He gets them to pull down their pants and show their asses."

Bongino then went on strangely to remark that he didn't mean the comment literally! No?

The only thing wrong with Trump's 'animal' comment is that it is not fair to animals. They don't have free will; MS-13 gangsters do.

It is clear proof that  leftists in high positions in the Fourth Estate are moral scum that they could with impunity slander a duly elected president in such a vicious and absurd way.

Zuck

Here:

So here’s what I know about Mark Zuckerberg. During those first few weeks of Facebook’s existence, while he was assuring his fellow college students that we could trust him with their identities, he had a private conversation on instant messenger with a friend. That conversation was subsequently leaked, and published by Silicon Valley Insider. It is as follows:

ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard

ZUCK: just ask

ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns

FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one?

ZUCK: people just submitted it

ZUCK: i don’t know why

ZUCK: they “trust me”

ZUCK: dumb fucks

In the intervening years, I’ve learned that Zuckerberg values his own privacy so much that he has security guards watching his trash, that he bought four houses surrounding his own house to avoid having neighbors, that he sued hundreds of Hawaiians to sever their claim to tiny plots of land within his massive Kauai estate, and that he secretly built tools to prevent further private messages from coming back to haunt him.

Hollywood's and the Left's Fascination with Freaks

The denizens of HollyWeird love the freakish, the 'transgressive,' the grotesque, and the unnatural. And being leftists, they celebrate losers and screw-ups, from the legendary La La Land 'motorist' Rodney King to the shotgun murderer Tookie Williams. A characteristic of libs and lefties is that in their typical knee-jerk (reflexive as opposed to reflective) style, they take the side of losers, criminals, screw-ups and underdogs regardless of what they did to bring on their underdog status. If you don't understand this, you will never understand the Left and how pernicious leftists are.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in equal justice under the law. And I believe in helping those who, through no fault of their own, have fallen on hard times. I practice what I preach. But the attitude of leftists whereby they celebrate transgressives and miscreants is perverse, which is why these destructivos deserve our steadfast opposition and unremitting contempt.

Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you what I really think. For now, I pass the baton to Gilbert T. Sewall:

Hollywood’s A-list is almost all in for transformative social justice, which mixes calculated groupthink and “can I grab the spotlight?” As a result, America’s favorite Hollywood evening has mutated into hours of glossy political hectoring, this year in behalf of female empowerment, support for immigrants, and opposition to the National Rifle Association.

“Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion,” Harvey Weinstein declared in 2009. “We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe.” With telethons and global hugs, who needs nature or God?

[. . .]

Hollywood likes freakish [freakishness], and so do its devotees. Criticizing tattoos, hookups, rap music, or trannies — saying the wrong thing on Facebook — might get you into trouble at work or school. Heaven forbid you should offend those who would consider your disapproval “hatred,” which entitles them to destroy your career or good name. Or maybe blow you away.

We’re getting used to that as well. First-person shooter video and computer games allow people to enact murder, not only watch it. That’s part of Hollywood’s multimedia platform too, a franchise worth billions.

Media accountants and publicists raise the specter of censorship and the thought police on their way to the bank. In fact, entertainment capitalists have no illusions what they are stirring up and the thrills they provide. New York- and Los Angeles-based wizards know how to stimulate appetites and points of view, and for a price they can do their magic in Washington, D.C. Privately, they exalt [exult] in their power.

Meanwhile, Hollywood doubles down on identity politics. It insists that depravity and imaginary violence do not lead to sociopathic behavior. It professes the product is mere fiction, that it has no real world effect. If you don’t like it, look the other way. You don’t have to buy it.

 

The Contribution of Hollywood Cultural Polluters to Violence

Our contemporary media dreckmeisters apparently think that the purpose of art is to degrade sensibility, impede critical thinking, glorify scumbags, and rub our noses ever deeper into sex and violence. The liberal fetishization of freedom of expression without constraint or sense of responsibility is part of the problem. But I can't let a certain sort of libertarian or economic conservative off the hook. Their lust for profit is also involved.

What is is that characterizes contemporary media dreck? Among other things, the incessant presentation of  defective human beings as if there are more of them than there are, and as if there is nothing at all wrong with their ways of life. Deviant behavior is presented as if it is mainstream and acceptable, if not desirable. And then lame justifications are provided for the presentation: 'this is what life is like now; we are simply telling it like it is.' It doesn't occur to the dreckmeisters that art might have an ennobling function.

The tendency of liberals and leftists is to think that any presentation of choice-worthy goals or admirable styles of life could only be hypocritical preaching.  And to libs and lefties, nothing is worse than hypocrisy.  Indeed, a good indicator of whether someone belongs to this class of the terminally benighted is whether the person obsesses over hypocrisy and thinks it the very worst thing in the world.  See my category Hypocrisy for elaboration of this theme.

Leftist scum need to look in the mirror before blaming inanimate objects for violent behavior.

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Michael Goodwin

Fake News: 18 School Shootings Since January 1, 2018. The Importance of Definition

The question of how many school shootings have occurred in a given place over a given period of time is an empirical question. But to answer the empirical question, one must first have answered a logically prior question, which is non-empirical. This is the conceptual question as to the definition of 'school shooting.' 

What counts as a school shooting? The supervised, safe, Saturday morning on-campus firing of BB guns at targets? The 'discharge' of a pea shooter? The shotgunning of ducks in  a pond on a school's grounds?  The killing of a stray deer with bow and arrow?

Suppose some punk fires a .223 round at a window of a school in the middle of the night when no one is there from an off-campus position. That could be called a school shooting too. A physical part of the school was shot at.

Or let us say that a distraught person commits suicide by shooting himself while seated in a car parked in a lot of what was formerly a school. This is an a actual case that was cited as a 'school shooting'! See linked article infra. Does this count as a school shooting? Not to someone who is intellectually honest.  

Clearly, what most people mean by a school shooting is an attempted mass shooting in a school or on the premises of a school by one or more assailants armed with deadly weapons, a shooting of students or teachers or administrative personnel that causes death or injury.

That definition no doubt needs tweaking, but if we adopt something like it, then, since January 1st we have in these United States more like three, count 'em, three school shootings. Three too many, but even a liberal gun-grabber knows that 3 < 18. 

Across the board, lying leftists bandy about terms without explicit definitions, or with over-broad definitions. They do this willfully to further their destructive agendas. If you are a decent human being you will do your bit to oppose them.

Now go read the Politifact article.

The Erasure of Garrison Keillor

His work and legacy, not the man. The Stalinism of the Left at work eating its own. Of a piece with the leftist erasure of history via the destruction of monuments and statues. Leftists share this nasty tendency with Muslims with whom they work in cahoots, consciously or not. Muslims are well-known for their iconoclasm, hostility to the arts, and destruction of cultural artifacts.

The trouble with iconoclasm is that all parties can play the game. 

Mass-murdering communist regimes are responsible for some 94 million deaths in the 20th century. Why not then destroy all the statues and monuments that honor the likes of Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Fidel Castro and all others who either laid the foundations for or carried out mass murder?  

You understand, of course, that I am not advocating this.  For one thing, the erasure of history would make it rather more difficult to learn from it. For another thing, there would be no end to it.  Why not destroy the Colosseum in Rome? You know what went on there.

Or how about St. Robert Bellarmine, S. J. ?  Should paintings and statues of him be destroyed?  He had a hand in the burning at the stake of the philosopher Giordano Bruno!

Details and documentation here.

Andrew Klavan on Fake News

A PragerU video, about five and a half minutes long.

Here are links to my Klavan posts.

The Bret Weinstein-Heather Heying Caper at Evergreen State

Having come to expect lunacy from lefties, I was not dismayed, but entertained, by the absurd bigotry that seeps out of the following passage from this Chronicle of Higher Education piece:

Now the couple weighed a new option. A producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight, a prime-time show on Fox News, had asked if Mr. Weinstein wanted to make his case to the conservative commentator and his millions of viewers.

It was a nauseating thought, says Ms. Heying. Theirs was an NPR family. Back in college, Mr. Weinstein had stood up to fraternities at the University of Pennsylvania over sexist and racist behavior at their parties. In an ideal world, says Ms. Heying, they would have talked to The New York Times or The Washington Post. But that’s not who had come calling.

"He was horrified, I was horrified," Ms. Heying told The Chronicle. "Tucker Carlson is someone he mocks in his classes."

Weinstein teaches biology and he wastes class time on political commentary and mockery of talk show hosts?

One thing I do like about lefties, though, is that they eat their own with a hunger and ferocity unlike anything on the Right. The 'progressive' Weinstein, who is now a 'racist,' is learning this the hard way. May he come to his senses. May he come to appreciate that conservatives are the new liberals, and liberals the new fascists. 

I have written a number of articles critical of NPR and PBS. Here is an excerpt from National Public Radio and the Tit of the State:

"If the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the State?" (Charles Krauthammer)

One answer is that the booboisie  of these United States is too backward and benighted to appreciate the high level of NPR programming.  The rubes of fly-over country are too much enamored of wrestling, tractor pulls, and reality shows, and, to be blunt, too stupid and lazy to take in superior product.

Being something of an elitist myself, I am sympathetic to this answer.  The problem for me is twofold.  NPR is run by lefties for lefties.  That in itself is not a problem.  But it is a most serious problem when part of the funding comes from the taxpayer.  But lefties, blind to their own bias, don't see the problem.  Very simply, it is wrong to take money by force from people and then use it to promote causes that those people find offensive or worse when the causes have nothing to do with the legitimate functions of government.  Planned Parenthood and abortion.  NEA and "Piss Christ."  Get it?

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My man Hanson:

Progressive media bias is now a given. The present generation of journalists and reporters tends to believe that just conveying the news no longer offers ample venue for their unappreciated talents, celebrity status, and deserved political influence.

Read it all.

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Here.

The Real Meaning of the O'Reilly Ouster

Andrew Klavan may have nailed it.

Posts of mine anent Klavan.

Meme Shift: From Trump-as-Hitler to Trump-as-Incompetent

A salutary saltus. Good for the country. The muse is with me this morning. 'Salutary' fits nicely with the downing of the deeply-flawed health care bill.  

But my purpose is not to preen and plume but to self-effacingly send you over to Scott Adams' place where you will find yet another installment of highly original analysis of the events of the day. 

(Yes, I split the infinitive, deliberately, for stylistic purposes.)

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Liberal Bias and the Political Problem of the One and the Many

A March 15 WAPO piece begins like this: "States’ rights is making a comeback, but this time it’s progressives, not slaveholders or white supremacists, raising the cry."

This implies that those who for years have been speaking out for federalism and Tenth Amendment rights are either slave holders or white supremacists.

I'd call that left-wing bias, wouldn't you?

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."

What is Federalism?

Federalism, roughly, is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that both the central and the constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs.  Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Federalism would make for less contention, because people who support high taxes and liberal schemes could head for states like Massachusetts or California, while the  conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment could gravitate toward states like Texas. 

We see the world differently.  Worldview differences in turn reflect differences  in values.  Now values are not like tastes.  Tastes cannot be reasonably discussed and disputed  while values can.  (De gustibus non est disputandum.) But value differences, though they can be fruitfully discussed,  cannot be objectively resolved because any attempted resolution will end up relying on higher-order value judgments.  There is no exit from the axiological circle.  We can articulate and defend our values and clarify our value differences.  What we cannot do is resolve our value differences to the satisfaction of all sincere, intelligent, and informed discussants. 

A return to federalism, I suggest, is the sanest and best way to overcome this difficulty.  If we are lucky we will be able to bring unity and diversity together in a dialectical unity thereby avoiding the extremes of totalitarianism and secessionism.  

It is the ancient problem of the One and the Many in one of its political forms. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. But a One worth wanting is a One not suppressive of, but respectful of, the many in their manifold  modes of manyness.

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Camille Paglia on Madonna Louise Ciconne:

Madonna's opening line at the awards gala was edited out of the shortened official video: "I stand before you as a doormat — oh, I mean a female entertainer." Merciful Minerva! Can there be any woman on Earth less like a doormat than Madonna Louise Ciccone? Madonna sped on with shaky assertions ("There are no rules if you're a boy") and bafflingly portrayed the huge commercial success of her 1992 book, Sex, as a chapter of the Spanish Inquisition, in which she was persecuted as "a whore and a witch."

C.P. is often a good antidote to P. C., not that that I would award Miss Paglia the much-coveted plenary MavPhil endorsement.

Thomas Sowell Bids us Farewell

Thomas Sowell hasn't quit the mortal coil, but he has put down his pen at age 86.  A loss to us, but a release and a relief for him. Jason Riley and other sensible blacks will carry on.

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If The New York Times were a serious newspaper . . .

. . .it would start by recognizing that Trump is a remarkable leader and that this is a new phenomenon. Then it would try to explore and understand the differences between the old order and the world Trump is trying to create. Then it could describe the context of the President-elect and educate its readers accurately in an informed, coherent manner.

Unfortunately, The New York Times is trapped within the obsolete establishment mindset which was wrong about Trump throughout the primaries, then was wrong about Trump throughout the general election, then was wrong about who would win. This elite mindset has learned nothing. It is now enthusiastically being wrong about the transition. All of this is great practice for the paper to be wrong about the new administration.  (Newt Gingrich)

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Mass Media and Spiritual Deterioration

A Facebook user told me he left  it because it had become for him an impediment to spiritual growth.  I concur and generalize:  inordinate consumption of any and all mass communications media militates against spiritual health for all of us.  Mass media content is a bit like whisky: a little, from time to time, will not hurt you, and my even do some good; but more is not better!

But why, exactly?  Here is one answer.  The attainment of mental quiet is a very high and choice-worthy goal of human striving.  Anything that scatters or dis-tracts (literally: pulls apart) the mind makes it impossible to attain mental quiet as well as such lower attainments as ordinary concentration.  Now the mass media have the tendency to scatter and distract.  Therefore, if you value the attainment of mental quiet and such cognate states as tranquillitas animi, ataraxia, peace of mind, samadhi, concentration, 'personal presence,' etc., then you are well-advised to limit consumption of media dreck and cultivate the disciplines that lead to these states.

Of course, the quick answer I just gave presupposes a metaphysics, a philosophical anthopology and a soteriology that cannot be laid out briefly.    So here are some links to related posts that fill in some of the details.

Meditation: What and Why

Modern Media and the Deterioration of Spiritual Life

Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy

Meditation: Three Baby Steps

Soul Food

How to Avoid God

William James on Self-Denial

How Not to Begin the Day

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A Part-Time Monk's Solution to Suggestibility

On Seinfeld

I confess to being a fan of this TV series many of whose episodes are now over 20 years old.  I have seen every episode numerous times.  I am not a student of the series as I am a student of the great Twilight Zone series, but then numerous episodes of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, belonging as it does to the  Golden Age of television, really are worthy of study.

What do I like about Seinfeld?  Perhaps it is the utterly zany quality of the Jewish humor.  Here is some of it in Yiddish (with subtitles).

And the political incorrectness I like.  But things have changed in America, so much so that Jerry Seinfeld nowadays refuses to perform before college audiences.

Indeed, it must be jarring for a boomer like Seinfeld, who went to college in the early 70s, when students were debating real issues freely, to confront today’s college campuses, where students often invent issues about which to be aggrieved, many times on behalf of other parties, and then have to find "free speech zones" in which to discuss them.

Consider the uproar over a statue of a man talking to a woman at a Texas college, which some decided was a depiction of "mansplaining," or a man patronizingly explaining something to a woman. Paul Tadlock, the 79-year-old sculptor, said the piece — done for 20 years before its offense was "discovered" — merely depicted his daughter, a student at the time, talking to a friend.

Then there were the students at UC-Berkeley, who called for "an occupation of syllabi in the social sciences and humanities," which sounds serious. Rodrigo Kazuo and Meg Perret felt aggrieved that a classical philosophy course had the audacity to cover actual thought leaders from classical philosophy, including Plato and Aristotle — because they all happened to be white men.

And earlier this year a male student at Portland, Oregon’s Reed College was removed from the discussion portion of his freshman humanities class for questioning the statistics on college sexual assaults and challenging whether or not there is such a thing as a "rape culture."

Why on earth would a comedian like Seinfeld, whose career has focused on humorously pointing out absurdities bring his act to such an utterly humorless and incorrigibly politically correct setting?

By the way, ever notice the similarity between these two guys?

Bill O'Reilly Makes His Abortion Mistake Again

He did it again last night.  So it is right, fitting, proper, and conducive unto clarity of thought that I re-post the following entry from 16 November 2012.

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The other night Bill O'Reilly said that a fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A fetus is an actual human life. 

Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And  let's be clear that a potential X is not an X.  A potential oak tree is not an oak tree.  A potential neonate is not a neonate.  A potential speaker of Turkish is not a Turkish speaker.  'Potential' in these constructions functions as an alienans adjective.  But an acorn, though only potentially an oak tree, is an actual acorn, not a potential acorn.  And its potentialities are actually possessed by it, not potentially possessed by it.  And the same goes for the acorn's properties: it actually instantiates them.

The typical human fetus is an actual, living, human biological individual that actually possesses various potentialities.  So if you accept that there is a general, albeit not exceptionless, prohibition against the taking of innocent human life, then you need to explain why you think a third-trimester fetus does not fall under this prohibition.  You need to find a morally relevant difference -- not just any old difference, but a difference that makes a moral difference -- between the fetus and any born human individual.

Bill O'Reilly is not the brightest bulb on the marquee.  And like too many conservatives, he has an anti-intellectual tendency. If I ran these simple ideas past him, he night well dismiss them with his standard Joe Sixpack "That's just theory" line.  And that's unfortunate.  Still, it's good to have this pugnacious Irishman on our side.  Night after night, he displays great civil courage, speaking truth to power.  It is de rigueur among leftists to despise him.  A feather in his cap!

Companion post:  Why are Conservatives Inarticulate?

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The Left's Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio

This entry from over five years ago stands up well and is worth re-posting.  Slightly improved, typos removed, infelicities smoothed.  It originally saw the light of the 'sphere on 24 March 2010.  As usual the MavPhil doctrine of abrogation is in effect:  later posts abrogate earlier ones.

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The qualifier 'conservative' borders on pleonasm: there is is scarcely any talk radio in the U.S. worth mentioning that is not conservative.  This is part of the reason the Left hates the conservative variety so much.  They hate it because of its content, and they hate it because they are incapable of competing with it: their own attempts such as Air America have failed miserably. And so, projecting their own hatred, they label conservative talk 'hate radio.'

In a 22 March op-ed piece in the NYT, Bob Herbert, commenting on the G.O.P., writes, "This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry."

I find that vile outburst fascinating.  There is no insanity, hatred, or bigotry in any of the conservative talk jocks to whom I listen:  Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager or Michael Medved.  There is instead common sense, humanity, excellent advice, warnings against extremism, deep life wisdom, facts, arguments, and a reasonably high level of discourse.  Of the six I have mentioned, Prager and Medved are the best, a fact reflected in their large audiences.  Don't you liberals fancy yourselves open-minded?  Then open your ears!

So what is it about Herbert and people  of his ilk that causes them to react routinely in such delusional fashion?

It is a long story, of course, but part of it is  that lefties confuse dissent with hate.  They don't seem to realize that if I dissent from your view, it doesn't follow that I hate you.  It's actually a double confusion.  There is first the confusion of dissent with hate, and then the confusion of persons and propositions. If I dissent from your proposition, it does not follow that I hate your proposition; and a fortiori it doesn't follow that I hate the person who advances the proposition.  This double confusion goes hand in hand with the strange notion that the Left owns dissent, which I duly refute in a substantial post.

I leave you with a quotation from David Horowitz, Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (Spence, 2003), p. 273, emphasis added:

The image of the right that the left has concocted -- authoritarian, reactionary, bigoted, mean-spirited -- is an absurd caricature that has no relation to modern conservatism or to the reality of the people I have come to know in my decade-long movement along the political spectrum -- or to the way I see myself. Except for a lunatic fringe, American conservatism is not about "blood and soil" nostalgia or conspiracy paranoia, which figure so largely in imaginations that call themselves "liberal," but are anything but. Modern American conservatism is a reform movement that seeks to reinvent free markets and limited government and to restore somewhat traditional values. Philosophically, conservatism is more accurately seen as a species of liberalism itself -- and would be more often described in this way were it not for the hegemony the left exerts in the political culture and its appropriation of the term "liberal" to obscure its radical agenda.

One more thing.  You can see from Herbert's picture that he is black. So now I will be called a racist for exposing his outburst.  That is right out of the Left's playbook:  if a conservative disagrees with you on any issue, or proffers any sort of criticism, then you heap abuse on him.  He's a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a 'homophobe,' a bigot, a religious zealot . . . .