Monthly Archives: April 2021

The sound and sensible political philosophy of Australia’s Prime Minister

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I know it’s unfashionable to say anything positive about Scott Morrison but I fear he may be under-appreciated. But where can you find such sentiments expressed anywhere any more by someone who leads a government: Don’t give in to identity politics, Scott Morrison urges.

Scott Morrison has urged Australians not to surrender to “identity politics” and the forces that undermine the community, declaring freedom rests on “taking personal responsibility”.

In a speech outlining his values and beliefs, the Prime Minister on Thursday night launched an impassioned critique of the “growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics” and elevated the necessity of viewing “people as individuals — with agency and responsibility”.

Speaking at a United Israel Appeal NSW donor dinner in Sydney, Mr Morrison set out his vision of morality, community and personal responsibility in the modern world while warning that reducing individuals to their attributes would end in division and a broken society.

“We must never surrender the truth that the experience and value of every human being is unique and personal,” he said.

“You are more than your gender, your sexuality, your race, your ethnicity, your religion, your language group, your age.“

All of these contribute to who we are and the incredible diversity of our society, and our place in the world, but of themselves they are not the essence of our humanity.

“When we reduce ourselves to a collection of attributes, or divide ourselves on this basis, we can lose sight of who we are as individuals — in all our complexity and wholeness. We then define each other by the boxes we tick or don’t tick rather than our qualities, skills and character.

These were once merely boilerplate commonplace statements. Now they are radical arguments that we seldom any longer hear. Very happy to hear the PM say what really needs saying in these dark times.

Politics of the absolutely lowest common denominator

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First this: Americans Waking Up to Fact That Kamala Harris Is an Idiot. The astonishing part is how many still don’t know and will never know.

I am also on some mailing list from the Democrats in Florida. This is the latest note to me. Politics for idiots, that is for sure.

Stephen — this is a hard email to write. But Democrats are about to lose our shot to pass H.R. 1, outlaw Republican cheating… and keep our progressive Senate Majority. Almost no one — seriously, NO ONE — has donated to fund our ads to pass H.R. 1. We’re still 8,401 donations SHORT of our strict budget goal. If we miss this goal, McConnell will BLOCK H.R. 1… we’ll LOSE our Senate Majority. So this is your FINAL chance to do the right thing, Stephen! Generous Democrats are 250%-MATCHING all donations before our strict deadline at 9AM tomorrow.

— Stephen Kate — You HAVE NOT DONATED to pass H.R. 1 and Lock-In our Democratic Senate Majority

CAN YOU DONATE TO PASS H.R. 1 AND CEMENT OUR SENATE MAJORITY?

250%-MATCH: $5 →
250%-MATCH: $25 →
250%-MATCH: $50 →
250%-MATCH: $100 →
250%-MATCH: $250 →
250%-MATCH: Another Amount →

Stephen — If we pass H.R. 1, we’ll BAN Republican cheating, BOOST Democratic Voter Turnout, and KEEP our Democratic Senate Majority. It’s that simple. And right now, our expert pressure ads are WORKING! That’s why we need to keep our ads up — but we need 8,401 donations by tomorrow morning to fully fund them. We’ll use that money to prove to McConnell it’ll be a HUGE MISTAKE to block H.R. 1 — he’ll have NO CHOICE but to send H.R. 1 to President Biden’s desk!!

But Stephen, we’re still 8,401 donations short of our strict goal. So we need you to rush $5 to pass H.R. 1 right now →

250%-MATCH: $5 →
250%-MATCH: $25 →
250%-MATCH: $50 →
250%-MATCH: $100 →
250%-MATCH: $250 →
250%-MATCH: Another Amount →

Thank you!

Connected cronies and the cost of energy

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Idiots are apparently idiots. From Instapundit.

THE RENEWABLES FRAUD: After the Texas Blackouts, Follow the Wind and Solar Money – All $66 Billion of It. “What was the result of all that spending? When combined with the shutdown of several gigawatts of coal-fired capacity, it’s apparent that the $66 billion spent on renewables before the blackouts didn’t make the Texas grid more robust – it made it more fragile.”

Once the left discovered how dumb its constituency is there has been no stopping them. However, there is also this comment to consider which adds a different perspective.

Going to point out that the good citizens of Texas did NOT vote for this nonsense, did NOT want it. No one outside of Austin was saying “Wow, we need more renewable energy sources!” I’m certainly interested in pursuing alternative sources of energy as are most people but I am not willing to replace what we know works with unproven technology that has a spurious track record and tends to cost ridiculous amounts of money for minimal output. Despite the fact nobody voted for this nonsense we got this anyway. In a “Red” state. Ponder that. In Texas we got a program we didn’t want and didn’t vote for and we’re considered “conservative”.

No doubt $66 billion includes a very large incentive for fraud and larceny of all kinds. Might as well mention this as well.

Investments only make sense if you can get an actual *return* on your investment equal to or greater than just dumping it into T-bills. The $66B ‘invested’ in solar and wind can only make a return if the government essentially taxes the citizens to transfer the money to the invest-ee, and behold, that’s exactly what is happening. And since there’s no real limits on it, the tax money shoveling to connected cronies rapidly becomes a huge scam.

“Connected cronies” is it? A few of those around.

The left is as mad as a meat axe

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In response to:

The Biden climate plan wants to trim Americans’ beef consumption to 4 pounds annually per person, or a 90% reduction in beef and a 50% total reduction in all types of meat. The theory is that cows — which produce methane gas — are killing the planet or something (while climate alarmists would prefer to kill all of us).

Biden also wants zero CO2 emissions by 2050. Needless to say, he’s out of his mind. Why don’t we all just pray for an extinction-level event to get rid of us all by 2050? That’s more likely than the plan climate alarmists’ wrote for Joe Biden.

That was from the comments.

The American left is beyond parody

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So beyond parody is the American left that it is astonishing to follow what is going on in the US. I have just had this sent to me: The GOP Is a Grave Threat to American Democracy. It begins:

The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again. But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized. How long this will last is an open question; whether it is happening is not. The radicalization manifests in myriad ways, most notably in Trump’s enduring popularity among Republicans. Trump’s loyalists have launched ferocious attacks against Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him for his role in the insurrection, even as national Republicans eagerly position themselves as his heir. Right-wing media display growing fanaticism, while public-opinion polls show GOP voters embracing Trump’s lie that the election was stolen from him. The Republican Party’s illiberalism, its barely disguised nativism, and its white identity politics are resonating with extremist groups. Slate’s Will Saletan, in an article cataloging recent developments, summarized things this way: “The Republican base is thoroughly infected with sympathies for the insurrection.”

From The Atlantic even which was once a sane publication. Meanwhile, there is a link to another of its articles.

Your guide to life on a warming planet

Discover Atlantic Planet, a new section devoted to climate change and the ways it will reshape our world

These people are re-shaping the world all right. It is hard to believe how lacking in self-awareness most of these people are.

Stationary state or is it stagnation?

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 I saw this yesterday and thought it may have been the most profound bit of meming I had seen in quite a while:

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I don’t know whether we have gone about as far as we can go in pretty well every kind of technology, or whether we have instead reached what John Stuart Mill had described as the stationary-state, but my belief is that we have just stopped advancement and are stagnating. The mobile phone and the PC are pretty good and have been developing but over the past 30-40 years we live in the dreariest period of stagnation possibly in the last 500 years. It’s a pretty good life I suppose, and materially better than in the past. But this is where we are and are going nowhere else, except politically into a new age of feudalism since even politically we are going backwards.

Personal freedom and individual rights are disappearing, even as an ideal. Per capita wealth is on the decline with a fantastic shift in the distribution of income towards those already better off. Everyone else will either stay put, or more likely begin to slip backwards as time moves forward. Hardly anyone notices how their lives have been constricted, but they have been and weirdly near on half the population is grateful for their oppression.

And this was from forty years before that.