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Who knows where this will end, but it’s better than how it’s been so far. Meanwhile, the Saudis are talking to the Israelis. And if you think that’s beyond belief, what about this:
CNN, MSNBC Journalists Give Trump Glowing Praise for NKorea Move...
And there’s this as well.
I went along to hear Jordan Peterson speak last night, and went early since I did have it in my mind that our own ANTIFA types might show up. I suppose it was this story that spooked me. This happened in Kingston, Ontario on the Monday of the same week he spoke in Melbourne on the Thursday.
A woman in eastern Ontario is facing numerous charges after taking part in a protest against a lecture by a controversial Toronto professor.
Police say a 38-year-old woman was arrested near Queen’s University in Kingston Monday evening. . . .
Officials say officers searched her backpack and found a weapon — a metal wire with handles commonly known as a garrotte.
But as it happened, no demos and a very very pleasant night. I won’t discuss anything of what he said during his presentation since he has a couple more to give, but will say he received the loudest applause I have ever heard for anyone, both when he came in and when he finished up. A wonderful evening of reflective thought.
What I will reprint however, as best I can, is his answer to the question that was asked by the lad sitting next to us, who is a trainee teacher, dismayed to the farthest extent about the cultural Marxism he finds at every turn. So his question (one of only five among the around 100 who were still queuing up when the Q&A ended) was how to push back when surrounded by ideological enemies. This, to the best of my recollection and according to my notes, was how he replied.
You are in a war.
If you go along with them you are going to lose.
If you try suicidal forms of resistance you are also going to lose.
The question is how do you fight “ideological possession”*?
You pay attention looking for alternatives and ways to oppose what you see.
But do not make any unnecessary enemies.
If you are going to move forward you need to make a plan and think strategically.
Don’t burn yourself up early. Play for the long run. Do it intelligently and move forward step by step.
You have to always think about what the people you are fighting can take away from you.
And while all that is right, the bit that is missing is a recognition of the crucial importance to help your friends. I am amazed and no little angered by the lack of mutual support for those who take largely the same side but have some difference which becomes all it requires for all too many to separate themselves and declare a fundamental discontinuity between their views and yours.
To take what ought to be a trivial example but is not, Donald Trump deciding for a variety of reasons to place tariffs on aluminium and steel. As it happens, his reasons are sound and sensible – starting from the imperative of ensuring that basic requirements for its war industries, along with shoring up electoral support in potential swing states. But even if you don’t like this particular policy, why join his and our enemies in building an anti-Trump case?
The left never ever on any issue allows the slightest deviance from its core policy front. There are no end of issues for which there is exactly one answer permitted. On our side, it is one thing to explore an issue and wonder about the pros and cons. It is quite another to be subject to some kind of reflex reaction – ideological possession if you will – which does nothing other than help tear down the side you need to succeed if we are not going to be swamped by the next turn of the election cycle.
*Ideological possession = Rote and unthinking answers to genuine social questions. Or as described by someone unnamed somewhere else on a comment on a Peterson video:
“The noise made by a person that has been so fanatically indoctrinated into an ideology that they’re able, quite without conscious thought, to generate a constant stream of sterile, inoffensive, thoroughly orthodox and politically correct platitudes that are almost (but not quite) wholly removed from real meaning and (by design) totally devoid of any visceral human feeling.”
Here are examples from that same Peterson presentation at Queens – but first turn the volume down.
Many of these are apparently students studying at the university.
I went along to hear Jordan Peterson speak last night, and went early since I did have it in my mind that our own ANTIFA types might show up. I suppose it was this story that spooked me.
A woman in eastern Ontario is facing numerous charges after taking part in a protest against a lecture by a controversial Toronto professor.
Police say a 38-year-old woman was arrested near Queen’s University in Kingston Monday evening. . . .
Officials say officers searched her backpack and found a weapon — a metal wire with handles commonly known as a garrotte.
But as it happened, no demos and a very very pleasant night. I won’t discuss anything of what he said during his presentation since he has a couple more to give, but will say he received the loudest applause I have ever heard for anyone, both when he came in and when he finished up. A wonderful evening of reflective thought. But I will reprint, as best I can, his answer to the question that was asked by the lad sitting next to us, who is a trainee teacher, dismayed to the farthest extent about the cultural Marxism he finds at every turn. So his question (one of only five among the around 100 who were still queuing up when the Q&A ended) was how to push back when surrounded by ideological enemies. This, to the best of my recollection and according to my notes, was how he replied.
You are in a war.
If you go along with them you are going to lose.
If you try suicidal forms of resistance you are also going to lose.
The question is how do you fight “ideological possession”?*
You pay attention looking for alternatives and ways to oppose what you see.
But do not make any unnecessary enemies.
If you are going to move forward you need to make a plan and think strategically.
Don’t burn yourself up early. Play for the long run. Do it intelligently and move forward step by step.
You have to always think about what the people you are fighting can take away from you.
*Ideological possession = Rote and unthinking answers to genuine social questions. Or as described in one of the comments in the video below,
“The noise made by a person that has been so fanatically indoctrinated into an ideology that they’re able, quite without conscious thought, to generate a constant stream of sterile, inoffensive, thoroughly orthodox and politically correct platitudes that are almost (but not quite) wholly removed from real meaning and (by design) totally devoid of any visceral human feeling.”
Ignorant Stupid Immature and Socialist – our version of ISIS.
They know nothing worth knowing. They are ignorant of history and ethics, have no expertise in anything other than an ability to misunderstand anything. All emotion, no actual learning. Cannot discuss anything in a rational manner. Only know how to hate but no ability to explain. They are the very essence of stupid, completely unable to learn anything that requires depth and commitment. Dull witted and boring in every relevant sense. They are unable to explain anything that is worth anyone else’s time. Their only way to get attention for their empty thoughts and useless ideas is to come at someone with a mask on their faces and a club in their hands. And irrespective of their age, they have never grown up, still trapped in the playground with them as the bully. And of course, socialist, the gold standard of ignorance and stupidity. In spite of socialism’s 100% failure rate in every circumstance in which it has been tried, they still seek a socialist outcome not knowing and apparently not caring that the result is human misery on a scale that can only be exceeded in the midst of war. The lowest form of human.
Speaking of which, off to hear Jordan Peterson this afternoon, assuming the Australian version of ANTIFA lets us through. The police certainly won’t open a path so we shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile back in the home country there is this: Woman arrested after rally against controversial professor Jordan Peterson. I’ll just give the first and last sentences of the story:
A woman in eastern Ontario is facing numerous charges after taking part in a protest against a lecture by a controversial Toronto professor. . . .
Officials say officers searched her backpack and found a weapon — a metal wire with handles commonly known as a garrotte.
There really are some nutters out there.
From 15 Amazing Finalists From Smithsonian’s 15th Annual Photo Contest. This is the text that goes with the photo:
Affection
© Thomas Chadwick. All rights reserved.This is my favorite black skimmer photo that I have taken in all the years following a little-known colony. Every year I select a nest when the parent is on eggs, then follow that same nest until they fledge. I choose one nest because colonies are chaotic; you will miss some shots by pointing the lens at hundreds of birds. One morning I got into position and lay there for an hour until sunrise when a parent flew in directly to feed the baby. The baby was inches away from me, so I couldn’t get the feeding photo. However, after the baby gobbled down the fish, I captured it running up to the parent and displaying the behavior pictured.
Category: Natural World
Here are the final lines of my review of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.
I can do no more than encourage you to read the book. There is nothing else like it and I cannot praise it enough.
This then is how the review begins.
STEVE KATES
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
by Jordan B. Peterson
Allen Lane, 2018, 448 pages, $35
______________________________
Jordan Peterson (left) may well be the deepest, clearest voice of conservative thought in the world today. In the space of less than a year he has risen from being a relatively obscure professor of psychology at the University of Toronto to becoming perhaps the most articulate defender of the values of the West to have arisen in the last fifty years. I can think of no one in recent times who has been able to reach such depths of understanding, but with such an extraordinary ability to make plain his meaning to such large numbers of people. You should, of course, read his 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, but you should also watch as many of his online presentations as you can if you are interested in understanding, and preserving, the values of our Western civilisation.
The rest of the review you can read here, but not only do I think you should read the book, you should also subscribe to the magazine as well.
“Every economic answer is a political question.”
It is entirely possible that the US is tired of carrying most of the burden for the defence of the West and would like a bit of sharing the burden. It might also find some respite for itself in strengthening those parts of its economy which are more closely associated with its defence industries. And it might even wish for some kind of gratitude from others supposedly on its own side in trying to assist the US in resurrecting its strength. And then there are the straightforward economic issues, which are not the same as the political. So let us go to these.
And of course the issue even economically is comparative advantage and not pure let the most efficient producer produce each product. With comparative advantage it is not always the most efficient low-cost producers who produce. If you don’t even understand that, you should keep right out of this debate.
Why encourage free trade:
Why “free trade” is not working for the US:
Trading blocs
A regional trading bloc is a group of countries within a geographical region that protect themselves from imports from non-members. Trading blocs are a form of economic integration, and increasingly shape the pattern of world trade. There are several types of trading bloc:
Preferential Trade Area
Preferential Trade Areas (PTAs) exist when countries within a geographical region agree to reduce or eliminate tariff barriers on selected goods imported from other members of the area. This is often the first small step towards the creation of a trading bloc.
Free Trade Area
Free Trade Areas (FTAs) are created when two or more countries in a region agree to reduce or eliminate barriers to trade on all goods coming from other members.
Customs Union
A customs union involves the removal of tariff barriers between members, plus the acceptance of a common (unified) external tariff against non-members. This means that members may negotiate as a single bloc with 3rd parties, such as with other trading blocs, or with the WTO.
World Trade Organisation
There are then the WTO rules of trade engagement which were devised when the US economy was a lot more robust than it now is and when the US was willing to make sacrifices of all kinds to help others withstand the spread of communism. None of this is applicable today. The US is therefore no longer willing to watch others cheat their way into a stronger trade position, at the cost of its own national security and economic strength. Here is part of what the WTO is up to.
WTO Rules
1. Most-favoured-nation (MFN): treating other people equally Under the WTO agreements, countries cannot normally discriminate between their trading partners. Grant someone a special favour (such as a lower customs duty rate for one of their products) and you have to do the same for all other WTO members.
2. National treatment: Treating foreigners and locals equally Imported and locally-produced goods should be treated equally — at least after the foreign goods have entered the market. The same should apply to foreign and domestic services, and to foreign and local trademarks, copyrights and patents.
3. Developing countries have transition periods to adjust to the more unfamiliar and, perhaps, difficult WTO provisions — particularly so for the poorest, “least-developed” countries – so these basket case economies are allowed to whittle away at the economic strength of the developed world.
The quote at the top, by the way, is from Joan Robinson, who has quite a lot to say about free trade that ought to be read by the economic illiterates who populate the world, who are now found speaking on behalf of the status quo, as harmful as the status quo is to most of the lower half of the income distribution. Robinson was not just a Keynesian but a Maoist, but she remains one of the clearest and most penetrating economic writers of the twentieth century.
Certain ideas are simply eliminated.
We are building an unconscious mind into the internet.
Not sure anyone knows what the the government can do…. Very difficult for regulators to keep up with this sort of thing.
The best single one line statement on modern economics. What else is there to say?
Law of Markets 