Maverick Philosopher

Diversity = Cultural Enrichment

California, Colorado, and now Ohio. As a former resident of Ohio, this got my attention:

Welcome to Springfield, Ohio. It’s a nice town of about 60,000 that the administration decided needed about 20,000 Haitians – flown in directly from Haiti, mind you. Injecting this wonderful diversity from arguably the worst place on the planet into a nice little Midwestern town has had the predictable effect. Remember all those swans and ducks that used to swim in the park? They’re gone. The Haitians ate them. They’ve also eaten pet cats and dogs. Yeah, they’re eating peoples’ pets, slaughtering and butchering them, and turning them into lunch. I guess the cash they’re getting from all of us for the privilege of being here illegally isn’t enough – they have to chow down on Fido. Naturally, the American citizens of Springfield are disgusted by this, as well as the other crime and pathological behavior they’re seeing. What does the government say? “Shut up, racists. Also, you’re probably transphobes.”

The Roots of STEM Excellence

An important WSJ article by Charles Murray. 

I wish Murray were more direct and less worried about being called a racist and a white supremacist. An excess of prudence and a deficit of courage? It is interesting how these two cardinal virtues pull in opposite directions. 

Related: Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race

Defensive Gun Use Without a Shot Fired

Texas man defends family from machete-wielding home invader with his 9mm semi-auto.

A quartet of questions.

How would you repel a home invasion?

Would you vote for a political party they leaders of which intend to violate your right to self-defense?

Would you lay money on the proposition that the miscreant depicted in the article is an illegal alien?

Is it wise to vote for a party that stands for open borders?

Related:  An Abuse of Language: 'Gun Buy-Back'

Comrade Kamala's Dangerous Policies

Stealth ideologue that she is, she won't tell you what her policies are. You can either elect her to find out, or go here for a preview.

The Integrationist Fantasy

E pluribus unum? Out of many, one? It can work, and it did work for a time, although not perfectly. But no longer. Whether a One can be made of Many  depends on the nature of the Many. 

A viable One cannot be made out of just any Many. 

To think otherwise is to succumb to what I call the Integrationist Fantasy.  This is the dangerous conceit that people can be brought together peacefully and productively despite deep differences in their languages, religions, cultures, traditions, and values.

To integrate is to bring together into a whole.  But a functioning whole, whether political, social, or of any sort, cannot be assembled from any old assortment of parts. In terms of an outworn metaphor from yesteryear, there have to be some constraints on the range of ingredients thrown into the melting pot. Your stew will not be improved by the addition of ground-up spark plugs or enhanced by a liberal dose of WD-40.

Keeping with the gustatory metaphor, wide-open borders is a recipe for disaster.  

Signposts on the Way to the Insane Asylum

Top o' the Stack. 

J. D. Vance on Kamala the Chameleon

Under three minutes. 

Look, Dana, she's not running a political campaign. She's running a movie. She only speaks to voters behind a teleprompter. Everything is scripted. She doesn't have her policy positions out there. She hasn't answered why she wanted to ban fracking, but now she doesn't. She wanted to defund the police, but now she doesn't.

She wanted to open the border, but now she doesn't. She should have to answer for why she presents a different set of policies to one audience and a different set of policies to another audience. And I think that's what President Trump is getting at. This is a fundamentally fake person. She's different depending on who she's in front of.

Spot on. The fatuous fem is a fake, a phony, a fraud.  Almost everything out of her mouth is either incoherent or vacuous.  Have you ever heard her say anything that was neither? Tell me what it was.

Dem-Fems for Kamala

Miranda Devine:

As polls show America’s young men are lurching rightward at a rapid pace, the Democratic brand has finally evolved into the party of scolding shrews, nagging Karens and “preachy females,” as Dem dinosaur James Carville calls them.

Its image is tied to a type of unserious, self-involved, neurotic, dogmatic Dem-fem who insists on telling you her pronouns and whose highest goal is abortion on demand right up until the moment of birth. 

She is terrified of men unless they are transgender or submissive “white dudes for Kamala” with man buns. 

Now that Scranton Joe is out of the picture and Kamala is at the helm, the feminizing trend is accelerating the party into certain electoral oblivion (with the obvious caveat for election fraud). 

I am glad that the astute Miranda threw in the caveat. After all, we know a priori that the Dems will cheat their  asses off come November. If the end justifies the means, why not? It worked last time, so they figure it will work again. Compare the race card. The Dems have been playing it for years despite all the respectful, careful, and eminently sane explanations by conservatives that our positions are in no defensible sense of the term 'racist.' Why then don't the lefties listen to sweet reason and stop playing the card? Why don't they be nice and play fair? Because it works for them in attaining and maintaining power and control, which is what they are out for first, foremost, and forever. Power to do what? To tear everything down, so that, somehow, by some magic, utopia will arise. 

For the same reason they can be expected to cheat in the upcoming election.  You need to wake up from 'woke' and realize that our political enemies are just that enemies. They are enemies not just of us, but of the attainable good. They are not good people. I am mainly referring to the cadre Left (the core or skeletal drivers of the movement comprising the true believers, in Eric Hoffer's sense, and the cynics) and not the much larger group of useful idiots, who are morally and intellectually obtuse mediocrities.

It is foolish to underestimate the Kamala crazies, as Newt Gingrich has pointed out.

................

If any Kant aficionados are lurking about, my use of a priori above is the relative sense of the term Kant refers to in the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason (1787) at B2:

. . . it has been customary to say , even of much knowledge that has been derived from empirical sources, that we have it or are capable of having it a priori, meaning thereby that we do not derive it immediately from experience, but from a universal rule -- a rule which is itself, however, borrowed from experience. Thus we would say of a man who  undermined the foundations of his house, that he might have known a priori that it would fall, that is, that he need not have waited for the experience of its actually falling. But he still could not know this completely a priori. For he first had to learn through experience that bodies are heavy, and therefore fall when their supports are withdrawn. (NKS tr., p. 43)

Death by DEI

Politicians are especially in danger, although we are all  at risk.  Christopher Rufo:

To say it plainly: there is no need for women in a president’s security detail. The Secret Service is an elite institution that can funnel down a large number of candidates to select the few who will protect the president. The best candidates—the strongest and fastest, the best marksmen—will be men. That’s just reality.

It’s a reality that the Secret Service is determined to circumvent. The agency itself has published its fitness standards in two parts: one for men, and a separate, less rigorous one for women.

And who is involved in "assassination prep?" Quite obviously, the Left:

The June issue of The New Republic is explicitly devoted to comparing Trump to Hitler, one of the greatest mass murderers in human history. It’s full of essays about how grim life will be under Dictator Trump. The editors justified this by saying, “Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’”

Chicago under Democrat 'Control'

Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Born in Chicago  

I was born in Chicago in nineteen and forty one
I was born in Chicago in nineteen and forty one
Well my father told me
Son you had better get a gun.

True then, truer now. 

And you still be ridin' with Biden? How stupid can you be? How self-destructive? How willfully self-enstupidated? And of course the scourge is not upon Chicago alone but upon every Dem-'controlled' city, county, state, and jurisdiction.

The humorous meme is now a reality:  ammo vending machines are coming to stores.  That's no joke.

I'm a staunch supporter of 2A rights, but this cannot be a good development. What's next? Ammo sales at drive-through liquor stores? "Would you like a box of ammo to go with your bottle of Hornitos tequila?  Today's special is Federal 115 gr FMJ 9 mm hollow point."  

To vote Democrat is to vote for more crime and the defunding of professional law enforcement  The more crime,  the more the burden of personal defense is placed on the citizen. But the average citizen is unlikely to get the proper training and to devote the time needed to become proficient in the use of firearms.  The upshot is more accidental negligent discharges. In a well-functioning society, the laws are enforced and the criminal element is kept in check so that the citizen can go about his business without the need to, and the grave responsibility that comes with, 'packing heat.'  

And you are still a Democrat? WTF is wrong with you?

Related: Shooting Up Chicago

Gaslighting

Jen Psakis a while back on the so-called 'migrant' crisis: "Doesn't exist!"

Did SCOTUS "turn in Trump's favor"?

Thus CNN. Of course not. What despicable idiots these hate-America leftist journos are! The correct decision happened to redound to his benefit. That's all. 

Matt Taibbi on Brandon Straka and #Walkaway

Here

Of DEI and the Devil

Top o' the Stack. Excerpt:

The hard Left, which now controls the Democrat Party, is evil at its core. I don't say that every  leftist, 'progressive,' and wokester is evil. Most of these folks are useful idiots. A large subset of them are superannuated, low-information, life-long Democrats who are pissing away their 'golden years' in empty socializing, hitting little white balls into holes, and other forms of Pascalian divertissement.

The Cure for DEI

DJT

Historians Need Not Apply

At the intersection of academia and wokery lies academentia. 

I have one quibble with Hinderaker. He writes,

But the phenomenon at work here–a huge cadre of well-educated people who think they are entitled to make good money, be treated with deference, and play a significant role in public life, but who in fact are not very employable and whose expectations are doomed to be frustrated–explains a lot about the demented quality of our current culture.

The phrase "well-educated people" is surely out of place. This "huge cadre" is not well-educated by any reasonable, historically-based standard.  But you've heard this sort of thing from me before, for example, here. Tony Flood offers some excellent commentary.

Will a Perfect Storm Soon be upon us?

Anthony Flood thinks so.  Here is how his piece begins:

The dictionary defines a perfect storm as an “unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.” The latter, as I see it, is life as we’ve become accustomed to enjoying it.

Four years ago, I stated my grounds . . . . 

And now Flood adds to the list:

My list didn’t give sufficient attention to the open southern border of the United States, which is being invaded daily in great numbers, or the explosion of urban crime.

I was not thinking of the resurrection of Nazi-level, genocidalist  antisemitism within the walls of the institutions tasked with handing on civilization’s treasures.

I inexcusably paid no attention at all to the moral depravity that acquiesces in (if not celebrates) infanticide and the gender confusion that spits on the revelation of God (Genesis 1:27, 5:2; Matthew 19:4-6) Whom the “perfect stormtroopers” hate because they love death (Proverbs 8:36). Structural instabilities have followed the culture of death as the night the day. (I’ll let others decide if the charge of post hoc, ergo propter hoc is relevant.)

The world-historical figure who may win the general election in 168 days (to which victory I will contribute) may slow the rate of decline and postpone some of its consequences, but he can’t reverse it.

On November 6, 2024, no perfect stormtrooper will say, “Well, you beat us fair and square! Better luck next time!” No, they’re prepared to “accept” such an electoral result the way the PLO famously “accepted” the state of Israel, that is, an enemy to be destroyed and whose people are to be exterminated. Their plans to destroy Western Civ in general and its American outpost in particular will be pursued.

Like Napoleon, Trump may reshape the trajectory of a post-revolutionary era and bevel a few of its sharp edges. In the offing, however, I see no counterrevolution worthy of the name. As I wrote in the cited post:

Call me a secular pessimist (although I’m an eschatological optimist), but I see no liberation in this dispensation, libertarian or otherwise, from those scourges. God will stop the wicked in their tracks:

So shall they [God’s enemies] fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him (Isaiah 59:19).

He’ll lift it. God’s promised government is a future intervention that God, not man, will inaugurate; its blessings will be manifest to all, and delivered directly. “Thy Kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10).

Think you can cheer me up in the short run? Have at it.

Leftists Love Criminals

You will never understand the Left until you understand that they reliably take the side of  criminals, who comprise their clientele and path to power, over the law-abiding.   And with lefties it is always about power and control, first, foremost,  and forever.

Here we read about a 78-year-old Englishman who, in defending himself against a screwdriver-wielding home invader, caused the miscreant's death and is now facing a murder charge.

Dear old England, the mother country. It is sad to see your mother, senile and decrepit, go down the toilet, having lost all her moral sense and the will to live.

Examples such as this one, like entities, are easily multiplied; unlike entities, however, citations of leftist assaults on justice  are not likely to be multiplied beyond necessity.

Here is another example, a recent one, from Minnesota, for your delectation, or rather, disgust.

Once again one sees the justification for my political burden of proof:

As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I call the political burden of proof.  The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so  morally and intellectually obtuse as not to be worth talking to.

Actually, that is far too mild a statement. Perhaps tomorrow I will tell you what I really think.

Who Are These Hamas Supporters?

This just in from Tony Flood:

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” chant the useful idiots at elite institutions and parades in the West. Who are these people? Atheists who support theocratic lunatics, democrats who endorse medieval tyrants, feminists who defend misogynists who parade with the desecrated corpses of women, gays who defend maniacs who would joyfully hang them or toss them off the roof of a tall building. They talk of a secular, democratic and socialist Palestine. As George Orwell observed: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” 

Walter E. Block, "The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas." (Emphasis added.) This is the text of the 927-word WSJ op-ed, published October 11, 2023, behind their paywall; Block posted it the next day on his Substack. 

Austrian School economist and first-generation Rothbardian (i.e., anarcho-capitalist libertarian), Block is a co-author of the 962-page The Classical Liberal Case for Israel (Springer 2021). For me, this book is prohibitively expensive; its argument, however, can be read for free in a documented-to-the-hilt article that the authors had published five years earlier in a peer-reviewed journal: Block WE, Futerman AG, and Farber R, The Legal Status of the State of Israel: A Libertarian Approach, Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law, No. 11, July 2016, 435-554. This link will open a 119-page pdf. 

I reiterate my stock disclaimer: Linkage does not constitute plenary endorsement.  I stand for free speech and open inquiry, and thus against those leftists, and in particular those leftists in cahoots with Islamists, who dishonor these classically liberal and traditionally American values. That being said, I fully endorse the material from Block quoted by Flood supra.

 

Addendum. Here is Hans-Hermann Hoppe's reply to Walter E. Block's "The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas," above cited.  I am not qualified to enter this debate, but I will repeat the following from my partially autobiographical essay From Democrat to Dissident:

We were friends for a time, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary nonintellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas. They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter. He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas. So, the tendency is for one intellectual to view another whose ideas differ as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing. Why? Because ideas matter to the intellectual. They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists. If one’s eternal happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one “gets it right” doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you had better belong to the right church. It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant “for their own good.”

 

Related (5/11):  Douglas Murray, Choose Life, not the Death Cults.  If, like me, you have no time to spend during working hours listening to slow-moving speeches, Murray provides an article adaptation of his speech before the Manhattan Institute, which adaptation is accessible via an internal link. 

 

And then there is this: Why Edmund Wilson Saw Judaism as the Key to America's Cultural Survival.

 

Finally, I see that Malcolm and 'Jacques' are debating, civilly but trenchantly, over at Pollack's place.

Health Equity?

Well, why not? 

Students in their first year of medical school typically learn what a healthy body looks like and how to keep it that way. At the University of California, Los Angeles, they learn that "fatphobia is medicine’s status quo" and that weight loss is a "hopeless endeavor."

Those are two of the more moderate claims made by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-described "fat liberationist," in an essay assigned to all first-year students in UCLA medical school’s mandatory "Structural Racism and Health Equity" class. Launched in the wake of George Floyd’s death, the course is required for all first-year medical students.

The Left destroys everything it touches, and it touches everything. Problem is, few physicians, comfortable and lazy as they are in their tony suburbs, have the civil courage to speak out against this nonsense.

Earth Day 2024

Substack latest.

The Intifada Comes to America

Well, what did you expect?

Intifada refers specifically to two separate uprisings of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank over the past four decades, but more broadly, it pertains to the continued resistance of the Palestinians to the existence of Israel. When they shout “Death to Israel,” they mean it. It should be a top priority of Congress now to determine whether they mean it when they shout “Death to America.”

The rise of pro-Palestinian hatred in the United States should not be a surprising development to anyone. Even before President Biden opened the southern border to millions of unvetted “newcomers,” as the global elites like to call the invaders, there has been a reckless U.S. policy going back two decades to resettle Muslim refugees from Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan in the U.S. heartland. And because immigration policy no longer treats assimilation as a worthwhile goal, many of those refugees are loyal to their homeland and their religion much more than to the nation that offered them safety and security.

I suppose that is an inevitable result of the globalist agenda of border dissolution and the merging of disparate populations for the purpose of sharing wealth and assuaging billionaires’ guilt.

But it is only inevitable if the rest of us tolerate it.

Quotations from Chairman Maher

Christopher Rufo has her number.

The new CEO of NPR, then, is a left-wing ideologue who supports wide-scale censorship and considers the First Amendment an impediment to her campaign to sanitize the world of wrong opinions.

Maher is no aberration. She is part of a rising cohort of affluent, left-wing, female managers who dominate the departments of university administration, human resources, and DEI. They are the matriarchs of the American Longhouse: they value safety over liberty, censorship over debate, and relativism over truth.

Here, Rufo interviews Larry Sanger about NPR CEO Maher. Excerpt:

Sanger: The fact that she is not immediately hounded out of her job—and she won’t be, I’m sure—shows you how profoundly and how quickly the culture of not just the Internet, but of the United States and the West in general, has changed.

The fact that you had to do some research and surface these videos, that they weren’t immediately caught as smoking-gun evidence of how bad things have gotten, shows you that the attitudes that she expresses are what we expect these days.

Poor Maher! She suffers from both TDS and Truth Decay.

Signposts on the Way to the Insane Asylum

• Looting is shopping without money.
• The 2022 riots were peaceful.
• The border is secure.
• Trespassing is insurrection.
• Dissent is hate.
• Free speech is hate speech.
• Barring candidates from the ballot is democratic.
• Abortion is health care.
• 'Migrants' are newcomers.
• The only purpose of guns is to kill people.
• Math is racist.
• There is no 'migrant' crisis.
• Diversity is our strength.
• 'DEI' is the new 'N' word.
• Coercive confiscation of firearms is gun buy-back. 
• Sex of a baby is not biologically inherent but a matter of 'assignment.'
• Race and sex are social constructs.
• To oppose the sexual mutilation of children is 'transphobic.'
• '2A'  is a terrorist marker.
• White supremacy is the greatest threat we face.
• 'Blind review' denigrates the sightless.
• The disabled are 'differently abled.'
• To argue against the moral acceptability of homosexual practices is 'homophobic.'

I am just getting warmed up. But I'm sure you've caught the drift by now. Each of these bullet points can be nailed down with numerous references which I have supplied elsewhere in many a post.

It is now your turn to do something in defense of civilization. 

'Woke' Home Defense

Helpful tips. About three minutes long.

But wait, there's more: a case for pre-natal squatters' rights.

Journalism is Dead!

When Bill O'Reilly said as much years ago I thought he was exaggerating. It is certainly no exaggeration now, if it is lamestream, 'woke'-captured,  Democrat shill outlets such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Washington Post (WaPo) we are talking about.  Here:

But we can thank Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at NPR, for revealing the main reason for journalism’s dire situation: Americans these days just don’t trust the news.

Berliner’s first-person account of the past near-decade at NPR – from Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign through the present – reveals a litany of reasons for this loss of faith. Berliner argues that NPR’s increasingly leftward tilt, lack of transparency, ideological groupthink and prioritization of diversity of identity and physical appearance above other values have led the organization astray.

If you like NPR programming, as I like some of  it, write them a check!  Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support.  We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made.  If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be made?  

So one good reason to defund NPR is that we cannot afford it.

But even if we could afford it, NPR in its present configuration should not receive Federal support.  And this for the simple reason that it is plainly a propaganda arm of the Left.* If you deny the increasingly leftward tilt of NPR, even unto 'wokery,' then you are delusional and not worth talking to.  So I'll charitably assume that you are sane and admit the bias.  The next question I will put to you is whether you think it is morally right that tax dollars be used to push points of view that half if not most of us in this land find objectionable.  I say that it it is not morally right that you take my money by force and then use it for a purpose that is not only inessential and unconnected to the necessary functions of government, but also violates my beliefs.

So that is my second reason for defunding NPR. 

Perhaps, if NPR were balanced like C-SPAN, it could be tolerated in times of plenty.  But we are not in times of plenty and it is not balanced.

Note that a reasonable liberal could accept my two reasons.  I am not arguing that government must not engage in any projects other than those that are strictly essential such as those connected to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad).  I am arguing that present facts dictate that defunding NPR is something that ought to be done.

As for WAPO, see here for their egregious mis-reporting of the Dexter Reed shooting.  Had Dexter read my Substack entry, What to do if a cop stops you, he might be alive today.

But he is dead, having foolishly, illegally, and immorally brought about his own death, as is journalism!

_________________

*I stand not only for the separation of church and state, but also for the separation of leftism and state.

Know-Nothings and Librarians

Idiocracy is upon us.

The Left's Orwellianism Pictorially Represented

W

Sabotage Anyone?

Should a state university add "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" to its curriculum?

This is an undoubtedly interesting time to be alive. How could anyone be bored?

Should I rename my Academia category, Academentia?

Demented POTUS, demented polity. Madness spreads and the fish stinks from the head.

Update (3:39 pm): More academentia at UCLA medical school. Unbelievable, but you'd better believe it.

Heliophysics and Common Ground

The solar eclipse brought us all together for one day. Well, we do share common ground when, like Thales, our heads are craned upwards in wonder. That common ground is the home planet, spaceship Earth, upon which we stand, bitterly disagree, and slaughter one another when not distracted by an unusual celestial phenomenon.  Clearly, common ground of the terrestrial sort is not enough: we also need ideological common ground to make the world less of an abattoir.

This is something the open-borders types don't want to understand. One of their fundamental errors is to imagine that all-inclusive diversity is compatible with social harmony.   

It is not that diversity is not a value; it plainly is.  Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good, and so is a diversity of opinions, especially insofar as such diversity makes possible a robustly competitive marketplace of ideas wherein the best rise to the top. A diversity of testable hypotheses is conducive to scientific progress. And so on.

But no reasonable person values diversity as such. A maximally diverse neighborhood would include pimps, whores, nuns, drug addicts, Montessori schools cheek-by-jowl with tattoo parlors and liquor stores, Hamas terrorists, outlaw bikers, priests both pedophile and pure, Sufi mystics, bank clerks, insurance salesmen, people who care for their property, people who are big on deferred maintenance . . . .

You get the point. Only some sorts of diversity are valuable. Diversity worth having presupposes a principle of unity that controls the diversity. Diversity must be checked and balanced by the competing value of unity, a value with an equal claim on our respect.

For example, one may value a district which is home to a diversity of restaurants (Turkish, Thai, French. . .), but only if they are all good restaurants. A diversity which includes ptomaine joints, greasy spoons, and high-end establishments is not the sort of diversity one values. Diversity of quality is not a value.  The same goes for diversity of moral decency, diversity of criminality, and so on. Or one may value a philosophy department in which a diversity of courses is on offer, but not one in which the diversity extends to the competence levels of the instructors or the preparedness levels of the students. One wants excellent instruction on a diversity of topics – but that is just to say that the value of diversity must be kept in check by the competing value of unity: the instructors ought not be diverse in respect of their excellence.

Diversity unchecked by the competing value of unity leads to divisiveness. For this reason, one ought not ‘celebrate diversity’ unless on is also willing to ‘celebrate unity.’ And this is precisely what too many leftists and 'woke' folk cannot, or will not, comprehend. They unreasonably emphasize diversity at the expense of unity. 

Liberty and security form another pair of competing values. The only liberty worth wanting is one that can be exercised in a secure environment. The liberty to quit my domicile at any time night or day is worth little or nothing if I am assaulted the minute I step into the street.  On the other hand, the only security worth wanting is one that allows the exercise of liberty. The security of totalitarian lock-down is not a value.

So what is to be done? Job One for all of you is to do your bit to make sure that Joe Biden is sent packing. 

It is not that diversity is not a value; it plainly is.  Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good, and so is a diversity of opinions, especially insofar as such diversity makes possible a robustly competitive marketplace of ideas wherein the best rise to the top. A diversity of testable hypotheses is conducive to scientific progress. And so on.

But no reasonable person values diversity as such. A maximally diverse neighborhood would include pimps, whores, nuns, drug addicts, Montessori schools cheek-by-jowl with tattoo parlors and liquor stores, Hamas terrorists, outlaw bikers, priests both pedophile and pure, Sufi mystics, bank clerks, insurance salesmen, people who care for their property, people who are big on deferred maintenance . . . .

You get the point. Only some sorts of diversity are valuable. Diversity worth having presupposes a principle of unity that controls the diversity. Diversity must be checked and balanced by the competing value of unity, a value with an equal claim on our respect.

For example, one may value a district which is home to a diversity of restaurants (Turkish, Thai, French. . .), but only if they are all good restaurants. A diversity which includes ptomaine joints, greasy spoons, and high-end establishments is not the sort of diversity one values. Diversity of quality is not a value.  The same goes for diversity of moral decency, diversity of criminality, and so on. Or one may value a philosophy department in which a diversity of courses is on offer, but not one in which the diversity extends to the competence levels of the instructors or the preparedness levels of the students. One wants excellent instruction on a diversity of topics – but that is just to say that the value of diversity must be kept in check by the competing value of unity: the instructors ought not be diverse in respect of their excellence.

Diversity unchecked by the competing value of unity leads to divisiveness. For this reason, one ought not ‘celebrate diversity’ unless on is also willing to ‘celebrate unity.’ And this is precisely what too many leftists and 'woke' folk cannot, or will not, comprehend. They unreasonably emphasize diversity at the expense of unity. 

Liberty and security form another pair of competing values. The only liberty worth wanting is one that can be exercised in a secure environment. The liberty to quit my domicile at any time night or day is worth little or nothing if I am assaulted the minute I step into the street.  On the other hand, the only security worth wanting is one that allows the exercise of liberty. The security of totalitarian lock-down is not a value.

So what is to be done? Job One for all of you is to do your bit to make sure that Joe Biden is sent packing. 

Race and Reportage

A trenchant addendum to a 14 March post.

False Abstraction

Surely one of the idiocies of the age is the oft-repeated, "Diversity is our strength." Anyone who repeats this bit of thoughtless group-speak wears his folly like a scarlet letter.  I'll leave it to the reader to work out why the falsehood is false and how it  illustrates the fallacy of false abstraction. Why do I have to do all the work?

But a soupçon of  sanity is beginning to glimmer in the heads of  some of the original progenitors of  DEI nonsense.  See here.

The Insanity of the Left

A vote for Democrats is a vote for such leftist/'woke' insanity as this:

JK Rowling has thrown down the gauntlet to the Scottish police. On 1 April, the day the new Hate Crime Act came into force in Scotland, Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, dared officers to arrest her. She posted a thread on X / Twitter in which she ‘misgendered’ various men who have pretended to be women, from a rapist who tried to be housed in a women’s prison to a balding footballer who cheated his way into a women’s team. ‘If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act’, she wrote, ‘I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment’.

There could hardly be a greater demonstration of the authoritarianism and absurdity of the SNP’s hate-speech law than the fact it could well lead to the arrest of the author of Harry Potter. The new law has the potential to turn this mild-mannered, left-liberal children’s author into a criminal hate-speaker. Not because she is a racist or a homophobe or a transphobe. But because, as a feminist, she believes in the material reality of biological sex. Because she believes that men cannot become women. Because she believes women’s sex-based rights must be protected. Because she believes in scientific truth.

Dissent is not hate. If I dissent from your VIEWS, it does not follow that I hate YOU. Even a 'liberal' should be able to make that distinction.

Old Commie Update

Remember Angela Davis? Here she links the 'war on Gaza' with the 'racist lynching of George Floyd.'

Creative Play with the Race Card

This takes the cake!

Update 4/2:  The latest example. Routine, not creative.

Know the Enemy!

We are at war with the Left and we ought to face the fact. The most virulent and anti-civilizational forms of leftism presently infect our educational institutions:

A recent headline from Seattle provides evidence for just how commonplace destructive ideas have become in our educational institutions as they have trickled down from the universities, reinforcing the truth of Allan Bloom’s assertion that “what is influential in the higher intellectual circles always ends up in the schools.”  A Seattle high school English teacher presented students with materials commonly found in anti-racism training manuals, in this case decrying the most important component of literary efforts (and civilizational progress): the love of reading and writing.  The pamphlet averred, among other things, that a love of reading and writing is a characteristic of white supremacy.  What interpretation could students glean from this assertion but that reading and writing should be viewed with mistrust or even avoided?

And you are still a Democrat? Are you paying attention?

On Taking Abuse

A re-post from 1 August 2013.  Slightly redacted. 

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Everyone gets abused verbally in this world and one had better learn how to take it.  There are bigots everywhere -- leftists and wokesters the most vile, their tendency  to project psychologically rendering their bigotry  invisible to them -- and sooner or later you will encounter your fair share of abusers and bigots.   A fellow graduate student called your humble correspondent a 'guinea'  in the 1970s. This was in Boston.  But I didn't break his nose and do the ground and pound on him. Was it cowardice or good sense?  Call it self-control.  If Trayvon Martin had control of his emotions on the fateful night of his encounter with George Zimmerman, he would probably be alive today.  The downside, of course, is that then  we wouldn't be having this delightful 'conversation' about race.

My impression is that there is  more anti-Italian prejudice -- not that it is any big deal -- in the East than in the West where I come from. (And without a doubt, Jim Morrison had it right when he opined that the West is the best, in at least two senses.)   I didn't encounter any anti-Italian prejudice until I headed East. I  had a Lithuanian girl friend in Boston whose mother used to warn  her: "Never bring an Italian home." I never did get to meet Darci's mom.  Imagine a Lithuanian feeling superior to an Italian!

But I want to talk about blacks, to add just a bit more to this wonderful 'conversation' about race we are having.

Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse and discrimination.  Don't whine, don't complain, don't seek a government program. Don't try to cash in on your 'victim' status, when the truth   is that you are a 'victim' of liberal victimology.  Don't waste your energy blaming others for your own failures.

Don't wallow in your real or imagined grievances, especially vicarious grievances.  That's the mark of a loser.  Winners live and act in the present where alone they can influence the future.

If you want me to judge you as an individual, by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin, then behave like an individual: don't try to secure advantages from membership in a group!

Abandon tribal self-identification.  Did you vote for Obama because he is black?  Then you have no business in a voting booth. 

Bear in mind that the world runs on appearances, and that if you appear to be a thug -- from your saggy pants, your 'hoodie,' your sullen and disrespectful attitude -- then people will suspect you of being a thug.

Take a leaf out of Condi Rice's book. She's black, she's female, and she became Secretary of State. And her predecessor in the job was a black  man, Colin Powell. It sure is a racist society we have here in the  USA.  And that Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court -- isn't he a black dude?  And not a mulatto like Obama, but one seriously black man.  

Lose the basketball.  Get the needle out of your arm, the coke out of your nose, and that soul-killing rap noise out of your ears. Listen to the late Beethoven piano sonatas. May I recommend Opus #s 109, 110, and 111? Mozart is also supposed to be good for  improving your mental capacity. We honkies want you to be successful.  If you are successful, we won't have to support you.  And if you are successful you will be happy.  Happy people don't cause trouble.

And we don't give a flying enchilada what color you are. It's not about color anyway.  It's about behavior. Work hard, practice the ancient virtues, and be successful. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Don't let Brother Jesse or Brother Al tell you otherwise.  Those so-called 'reverends' are little more than race-hustlers who make money from the grievance industry. And when they run out of grievances? Then they create 'micro-aggressions.'  

Liberals are not your friends either.  They want you to stay on the plantation.  They think you are too stupid to take care of yourselves.

If you learn to control your emotions, defer gratification, study hard and practice the old-time virtues, will you be 'acting white'?  Yes, in a sense.  High culture is universal and available to all who want to assimilate it.  What makes our culture superior to yours is not that it is white but that it is superior.  You have already 'appropriated' our technology. (Or did it come from sub-Saharan Africa?)  Why balk at 'appropriating' our virtues? We want you to! For your benefit and ours. 'Cultural appropriation' is a good thing. Here is a fine example of 'cultural appropriation.' 

Don't get mad, be like Rudy Giuliani. Can you imagine him making a big deal about being called a greaseball, dago, goombah, wop, guinea . . .  ? Do you see him protesting Soprano-style depictions of Italian-Americans as mafiosi? 

Jubilant over Trump's Win, Let Us not Forget the Colorado Baker

You and I are more like the baker than like The Donald.

Rod Dreher:

Jack Phillips is the Colorado cake baker who is constantly hauled in and out of court by lawsuits, and by actions by state officials, against him for refusing to bake specialized cakes that offend his conscience.

In 2018, one of the Christian baker’s antagonists went after him like this:

"I'm thinking a three-tiered white cake. Cheesecake frosting," the customer wrote in the June 4 email, according to Phillips' lawsuit filed in Denver's federal court on Tuesday. "And the topper should be a large figure of Satan, licking a 9" black Dildo. I would like the dildo to be an actual working model, that can be turned on before we unveil the cake."

Poor Phillips is now going to be hauled before the state Supreme Court again, in connection with this case, and his refusal to bake a cake meant to celebrate a gender transition. Guess who is now on the record backing the persecution via lawfare of this man?

More Proof of Democrat Mendacity

From TNR:

Two Termites: Bergoglio and Biden

I sometimes refer to the current pope as Bergoglio the Termite to underscore the destructive effect he is having on a once-great institution. Early this morning it occurred to me that I might write a post comparing the various termites undermining our institutions. Of course 'President' Joe Biden immediately came to mind. Just now, an e-mail crossed the transom pointing me to an article in which William Kilpatrick, whom I have often approvingly quoted,  does part of the job for me, comparing the termitic attributes of Bergoglio and Biden. I recommend it for your perusal.

Needless to say, when I refer to Bergoglio as a termite, that is a figurative use of language: I am not suggesting that he is literally an insect or ought to be 'rubbed out' by chemical or other means.  People who cannot distinguish between the literal and the figurative show a lack of intelligence. Most recently, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others of his scrofulous ilk have shown this lack of intelligence when they failed to grasp  that Donald Trump's recent use of 'bloodbath' was figurative, not literal.* 

Joey B struggles with the distinction as well. Remember his  “The American people literally stood on the brink of a new Depression”?  That was around 2013 if memory serves. 

It is worth noting that not every term of abuse is purely abusive: 'termite' as applied to Jorge and Joseph (both of whose initials are 'J. B.') is not purely abusive in that it contains a factual core: both of these clowns are in fact working to destroy  their respective institutions.  Wittingly or unwittingly? I am inclined to say wittingly in the case of Bergoglio, unwittingly in the case of the demented Biden.  

There is of course a serious moral question connected to the use of abusive language meant to express contempt for fellow human beings.  But in a war against such anti-civilizational forces as we now face, different rules of engagement are permissible. Or so it seems. A hard nut to crack.

___________________

*You could of course respond to me that Scarborough and Co. understand the literal-figurative distinction and also understand that context is crucial in the interpretation of anyone's oral or written remark.  They probably do. But then it is even worse for them: they are trying to bamboozle the American people.  This is a moral defect, which is worse than a failure of understanding. Dripping with intellectual dishonesty and disregard for truth, these people warrant our contempt 

Soaring Auto Insurance Rates

I received the bill for my 2013 Jeep Wrangler Sport the other day: $302.89 for six months. For the preceding six months I paid 274.09, and the six months before that 260.42. So yesterday I paid my agent a visit and reminded him of my stratospherically high credit rating, my lack of claims, my sterling driving record, my low mileage, my loyalty to the company, the whole shot.

He explained that  rates had gone down during the Great Covid Scare (my term not his) due to less driving but now were headed up again; Biden-flation (my term not his); and because e-vehicles are much more expensive to repair than gas drinkers (my term again).  All true. So I paid the bill and left.

On arriving home I flipped on Jesse Watters who had a segment  on young people and how they are getting hammered on rates. His focus was on onboard surveillance technology. Now if old people are unduly cautious on the roads and dangerous for that very reason, young people are worse, being impetuous, reckless, ignorant of physics, bereft of a proper sense of their mortality, without experience of life automotive and otherwise, distracted by their devices, distractive of each other, etc.   So they do stupid things at the wheel, the data gets sent to the insurance companies, and their rates skyrocket.

For example, I'm 'hauling donkey' in the fast lane doing 75-80 mph and some punk in a compact death-trap is on my ass.  I'm doing everything right, driving my Jeep as if it were a motorcycle: exercising due diligence, maintaining situational awareness, cycling through my mirrors and gauges, planning escape routes, staying out of blind spots, keeping my distance from other vehicles and especially from overloaded junk wagons.  I am engaging in automotive profiling. So the punk in the crapmobile tries to get around me, endangering himself, his passengers, and everyone around him.

The punk's high rates are the just wages of his automotive sin.

Of course, this is a deep and vexing topic. I don't want to live in a Sino-styled, omni-surveillant, Stasi-redolent police state! Damn you Dementocrats! Liberty trumps security! If you don't agree you are axiologically unfit to be an American. Go live in China or board the next time machine back to the USSR. Or the DDR. On the other hand, when the people lack virtue, automotive and otherwise, and will not govern themselves, then the plutocratic-pathocratic-totalitarian thugs have a plausible justification for their clamp-down and 'plausible deniability' of their malfeasance.

There is a lot to discuss. Here is something that I didn't know but that comports well with the pathocratic scumbaggery of wokeassed leftards:

Not all states allow car insurance companies to take gender into account. These six states prohibit the use of gender when pricing auto insurance:

• California

• Hawaii

• Massachusetts

• Michigan

• North Carolina

• Pennsylvania

How unspeakably stupid can an unspeakably  stupid reality-denying leftist be? But that is exactly what you would  nowadays expect in the once great and golden State of Californication and the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. 

A 'Temporal' Argument Against Race Change

The following excerpt is 'cannibalized' from my Substack article, Can One Change One's Race?

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Can I change my race? No. I can no more change my race than I can change the fact that I was born in California.  I might have been born elsewhere, of course, but as a matter of contingent fact, I am a native Californian.  Despite the logical contingency of my California birth, there is nothing I or anyone, including God, can do, or could have done, after the fact, to change or annul that fact about my place of birth.  And there is nothing I or anyone can do, or could have done, after the fact, to alter my place of birth, time of birth, weight, or any other contingent detail.

The same goes for race. My race is determined by my biological ancestors. Since both were white, I am white.  To change my race I would have to change a past fact, namely, that I am the product of the copulation of two white parents. But that fact, being past, cannot now be changed or annulled. The argument, then, is this:

1) If I can change my race from white to black, say, then I can change some fact in the distant past, namely, the fact that I am the offspring of two white parents;

2) It is not the case that I can change any past fact including the fact that I am the offspring of two white parents;

Ergo

3) It is not the case that I can change my race.

The argument assumes that it is nomologically necessary (necessary given the laws of nature) that parents of the same race have offspring of the same race, that, e.g., white parents have white offspring. The assumption is obviously true. 

Kathy Hochul, Leftist Idiot

Head over to Malcolm Pollack's place for some sensible commentary. Meat quote:

Political thinkers from Hobbes to Schmitt have understood that the fundamental principle that legitimizes the power of the State is the reciprocal obligation of obedience and protection. We cede to the State the awesome power of coercion by threat of violence, and in return we expect a guarantee of our public and personal security. This means that when the State abandons its side of that obligation, it is the right, and the duty, of the citizenry to secure their own protection.

That's right. It follows that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms.  The rate of exercise of that right stands in inverse relation to the failure of the State to guarantee our public and personal security.  The more the government fails to do what it is supposed to do, chiefly, protect life, liberty, and property, the more citizens will arm themselves.

From this you can see just how preternaturally stupid (or deliberately self-enstupidated) libs, lefties, and wokesters are. Presumably, they want fewer guns in civilian hands.* Their policies, however,  incentivize gun ownership by Joe and Jane Citizen. 

In a piece defending Viktor Orban against the mindless charge of being a 'fascist dictator,' Rod Dreher writes,

Unlike London, Paris, Washington, New York, Brussels, and elsewhere, street crime is very low in the Hungarian capital — and that’s not because the police are everywhere.

Think about it: just this week, the governor of New York [Kathy Hochul] ordered the state’s National Guard troops to patrol New York City’s subways to crack down on violent crime there. This never, ever happens in Budapest. Ever. A British friend traveling this week in New York said the scene outside his lodgings in Manhattan is appalling, with scores of African men — illegal aliens who came through Mexico — loitering on the street and urinating in public. That doesn’t happen in Budapest either, because Hungary is a country that controls its borders.

Read it all.

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*And so do I. It can't be good to have all sorts of untrained people packing heat.  I defend 2A rights, but I would never try to persuade people to arm themselves. Gun ownership is a grave responsibility. You have to get training, you have to practice, and you have to know the law.  Before you even think about buying a gun, you need to develop situational awareness. As the noted trainer Steve Tarani says, "If you have to go to guns, there has been a failure in situational awareness." That is a very slight exaggeration, but not by much. Another trainer, retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog here discusses ten ways to improve your SA.

What is the worst enemy of SA? The smartphone. Don't be a dumbass with a smartphone. Don't walk around with your head up your app!  

Is Trump a Threat to Democracy?

He most certainly is if 'democracy,' as per the woke Orwellian switcheroo -- to give it a name -- refers to plutocracy, rule by the wealthy. The plutocratic elites of the present time, unlike those of yesteryear,  are woke open-borders globalists with no commitment to their countries of origin. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton are good examples. You will recall Hillary's endless mouthing of 'our democracy,' not that it has stopped. The superannuated and hyper-mendacious cow has been put out to pasture, thanks to DJT, but the attention-obsessed greed head won't stay there.

That the USA is a plutocracy is convincingly argued by Peter Turchin in End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration (Penguin, 2023). When Turchin, no conservative, tells us that the USA is a plutocracy, he means that ". . . at the top of the power pyramid in America is the corporate community: the owners and managers of large income-producing assets . . . ." (124-5) The economic elites rule America indirectly by dominating the political class by lobbying and the like. (125) "The two power networks, economic and administrative, are jointed at the hip" with the economic network in the dominant position. (125) "The corporate community also controls the ideological basis of power through the ownership  of mass media corporations . . . ." (125)

In nuce: Hillary is homo mendax, and not just her: we do not have a democracy, but a plutocracy, and Trump, billionaire that he is, is a threat to it in his role as populist.   

How Censorship Drives the Woke Revolution

Nick Short at Tom Klingenstein's place quotes from Tucker Carlson's interview of Mike Benz:

Benz: You had this new power within DHS to say that cybersecurity attacks on elections are now ‘our purview.’ And then they did two cute things. One, they said mis-, dis-, and mal-information online are a form of cybersecurity attack; they are a cyber attack because they are happening online. And they said, well… we’re actually protecting democracy and elections. We don’t need a Russian predicate after Russiagate died.

So just like that, you had this cybersecurity agency be able to legally make the argument that your tweets about mail-in ballots — if you undermine public faith and confidence in them as a legitimate form of voting, you were now conducting an attack on U.S. critical infrastructure by articulating ‘misinformation’ on Twitter…

Carlson: So, in other words, complaining about election fraud is the same as taking down our power grid?

Benz: Yes. You could literally be on your toilet seat at 9:30 on a Thursday night and tweet, ‘I think that mail in ballots are illegitimate.’ And you were essentially then caught up in the crosshairs of the Department of Homeland Security classifying you as conducting a cyber attack on U.S. critical infrastructure because you were doing ‘misinformation’ online in the cyber realm, and ‘misinformation’ is a cyber attack on democracy when it undermines public faith and confidence in our democratic elections and our democratic institutions.

It really is as bad as that. As for mail-in ballots (except for certain narrowly restricted classes of people, e.g. military personnel serving abroad) they are an open invitation to voter fraud, an invitation that has been and will continue to be widely accepted. The invitation is of course part of the overall strategy of the Left to destroy our republic.

Herewith, yet another reason why anyone who is not a destructive, hate-America leftist must support Trump, warts and all, and is a contemptible idiot oblivious to his own long-term best interest if he doesn't.

Is Leftism a Form of Mental Illness?

Wokery is the most extreme form of leftism. Some if not all elements of wokery are indicative of mental illness on the part of those who actually believe them. I will mention just four.

• Thinking that one can effect a sex-change by merely mental gymnastics, by 'identifying' as a woman or as a man. Cognate with this species of insanity is the notion that sex of a neonate is 'assigned' at birth as opposed to being biologically inherent in the organism that exits the birth canal. A name can be assigned but not sex. Not even an inappropriate nominal assignment has the power to alter the sex of the nominatum. The boy named 'Sue' remained a boy.
• The bizarre notion that permitting or minimizing the consequences of criminal behavior will lead to less crime. 
• The astonishing conceit that mathematics is racist. Why exactly?  Because blacks as a group are not good at it?
• The knuckleheaded notion that wholly legitimate criticisms of a 'person of color' such as Alejandro Mayorkas may be deflected   by hurling the slur 'racist,' a word which wokesters never define the better to use as an all-purpose semantic bludgeon.
• Et cetera ad nauseam.