Category Archives: Cultural

Ignorant Stupid Immature and Socialist

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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.

My Quadrant review of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life

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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

The Future is a Judgmental Father

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
by Jordan B. Peterson
Allen Lane, 2018, 448 pages, $35
______________________________

jordan petersonJordan 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.

This review appears in the latest Quadrant.
Click here to subscribe

 
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.

Biblical morality

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She means more than just this, but in the world as it is, she cannot come right out and say it. Instead, she begins like this, as captured in the heading to the article: Understanding of the bible helps us decode western culture.

There has been some discussion lately about whether knowledge of religion, especially the Bible, is important. A founder of the Bible Literacy Project has recommended that all children study the Bible. He says: “If you don’t have knowledge of the Bible you can’t understand literature, history, art, music or culture fully … you’re not getting a full education.”

He is right. Our way of life is steeped in Judeo-Christian culture. We cannot decode Western culture without the Bible and some knowledge of religion.

What she actually means she saves to the end:

The anti-religionists demand that children just learn ethics, but from where do they assume these ethics spring? The most important thing about the biblical texts is that within the great biblical stories, youngsters learn our foundational ethical principles. Those first principles of ethical behaviour are contained in the Ten Commandments. To get to the Commandments we need to know the story of Moses, then the story of the Jews and, last, Jesus’ life and new teachings.

Many of the rather superficial, and destructive ideological fights that commentators are so keen on wouldn’t happen if they knew more about our cultural history and had more respect for the depth of our Judeo-Christian inheritance.

These precepts have governed our lives, our social organisation and our law for centuries, and are still valid. Whether we know it or not, they exist in our consciousness and ignoring them leads to confusion and chaos because as even the fashionable new agnostic guru Jordan Peterson admits, God didn’t give us the 10 suggestions, he gave us the Ten Commandments.

The only thing she gets wrong here is her assumption that Jordan Peterson doesn’t agree with her. Peterson on the existence of God.

And on atheism.

Ingratitude and ignorance

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This is from Powerline: Churchill in Five Minutes. We are an ignorant and ungrateful age though whether we are exceptional in this is hard to tell. The ingratitude for our ancestral struggles I have been mulling over ever since driving along the Western Front during August 2014 on the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War I, a conflict almost as crucial in the defence of freedom as the war that followed, has only deepened as I watch the disdain for our own past growing among the narcissist left. Even there on the day that World War I began there were no ceremonies I came across, with nothing of much interest in the pages of the press. Maybe ever thus, but there must have been a long period of time when Agincourt was a live memory. Today nothing, not for WWI and now even WWII, other than fake analogies with Nazis and Hitler everywhere to be seen. Anyway, it is good to see this recognition for Winston Churchill, the Man of the Century.

______

PragerU enlisted the services of the prominent historian Andrew Roberts to give its short course on “Winston Churchill: The man who saved the free world” (video below). It’s a good title and Roberts knows what he is talking about. He is the author of The Storm of War: A New History of World War II and the forthcoming biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny (also a good title, drawn from the concluding paragraph of The Gathering Storm).

The linked PragerU page includes a set of additional points, citations, and sources. The comments posted at YouTube include nitpicking about the video’s maps. The comments miss the point. This is the point: “The point about Churchill in 1940 is not that he stopped the German invasion, but that he stopped the British government making peace.” Sometimes you have to give war a chance.

I learned of the video via Roberts’s Twitter feed. It seems to be a box office hit in its own right.

Andrew Roberts@aroberts_andrew

My short video for @DennisPrager on Winston Churchill has received nearly 300,000 views in 4 days: https://www.prageru.com/videos/churchill-man-who-saved-free-world … Fun to make too

Churchill: The Man Who Saved the Free World

The West is free today thanks in large part to one man – Winston Churchill. Historian and bestselling author Andrew Roberts explains how Churchill saved the world from Nazi Germany.

Here is the concluding paragraph of The Gathering Storm, giving us Churchill’s thoughts on the evening of May 10, 1940: “During the last crowded days of the political crisis, my pulse had not quickened at any moment. I took it all as it came. But I cannot conceal from the reader of this truthful account that as I went to bed at about 3 A. M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Eleven years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms. My warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.”

The end of in the beginning

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I went out shopping for a book that would answer to the following description: Bible Stories for Children. I came across a couple but none that really did what I hoped, tell the stories from the Bible in a way that reflected their serious purpose and moral significance while also being told well enough so that the stories would be remembered. Where any child educated only within our school system would have the slightest chance of coming across the names Cain and Abel today, to choose only one example, is an unknown. Even the phrase, “In the Beginning…” would be unknown to almost any child brought up in the West today. Are the Ten Commandments taught anywhere at all outside of a religious school? It has become virtually impossible to teach almost anything about the moral and cultural roots of our civilisation.

On the other hand, getting a copy of Where Did I Come From? and other such explorations of the reproductive side of life are easy enough to find.

If you are interested in the decadence of the times in which we live, #MeToo Division, this might help to give you a clue.

This is timely

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Barnaby Joyce has just resigned over accusations of sexual harassment and here is Jordan Peterson discussing, “What are the rules that govern sexual interaction between men and women in the workplace?”

Video via Instapundit.

This is Andrew Bolt’s post on Barnaby’s resignation:

Barnaby Joyce quits as Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister. He says the complaint against him of sexuak harassment – which he denies – was the last straw.

Malcom Turnbull had tried to publicly shame him into quitting but failed. His personal attak at a press conference eight days ago backfired, wth Nationals MPs declaring Joyce would stay.

But then came three devastatig leaks from the Government which destroyed Joyce and invite revenge.

Someone, almost certainly from Cabinet, leaked that Joyce had not declared during a Cabinet discussions to apparove an inland rail line that he owned land along the route.

Then someone, almost certainly within Cabinet, leaked that Joyce had been “ruthless” in Cabinet in demanding Minister Sussan Ley quit over her expenses controversy and thus was a hypocrite in not himself quitting now.

A familiar name features in that leak:

Sky News is reporting that cabinet ministers are angry about Mr Joyce’s behaviour in light of his handling of previous crises.

Witnesses have reportedly said that during cabinet discussions relating to the scandal over Ms Ley’s travel, Mr Joyce was “ruthless”, insisting that Ms Ley “had to go”.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reportedly argued for a proper investigation to establish whether Ms Ley had done anything wrong, but Mr Joyce said, “No, let me tell you how this is going to end. She needs to stand down”.

He is said to have taken a similar approach with respect to allegations relating to a late-night incident in a Hong Kong bar involving a female departmental staffer, which were levelled at Mr Briggs.

And now someone, probably in the Nationals party or in the Government, leaked that a woman in Western Australia had accused Joyce of sexual harassment (which he strongly denies). The woman says she never wanted the accusation made public.

Politics is always tough. This assassination of Joyce has been particularly brutal.

I doubt he will forgive.

The One Australia Policy

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Two letters to The Oz yesterday responding to a column from the day before. There is nowhere in the world like Australia, but we will ruin ourselves if we do not understand that a One Australia Policy is the only policy that will keep us whole. Here’s the first letter.

Maurice Newman (“Assimilation must be part of the deal for new citizens”, 21/2) blames multiculturalism for “division, growing intolerance and diminished national pride”.

He is not entirely right. As an activist in the Chinese community since 1984, my conclusion is that the commodification of the ethnic vote is the real culprit. I have lost count the number of times I cringed when I heard politicians at Chinese New Year functions telling the assembled how they respected our culture and how we had every right to preserve our culture, with one saying that she had been a practising Confucian without knowing it.

Worse, they confer “grants” for cultural festivals under the guise of multiculturalism, but in reality for no other purpose than harvesting votes and political donations. Then there are the multicultural awards, paid directorships on government owned corporations, and sinecures in state upper houses, all to lock in votes. This commodification of ethnic votes has bred a whole class of ethnic leaders who stridently call for ethnic “rights” to buttress their personal support in their ethnic group, at the cost of sabotaging the natural gravitation of migrants towards assimilation to gain economic and social progress.

Such ethnic leaders do not seem to question why few of their Aussie-acclimatised children care to be part of their glorious make-believe fiefdoms.

Chek Ling, Corinda, Qld

And then this is the second.

Maurice Newman’s timely article reminded me of a very perceptive comment made in John Howard’s autobiography in the closing chapter: “Multiculturalism is not our national cement. Rather, it is the Australian achievement, which has many components. One of them has been, successfully, to absorb millions of people from numerous lands into the mainstream of our nation”. It is no surprise that those on the left who are quick to criticise any suggestion regarding curbing immigration themselves tend to dwell in the trendy inner-city suburbs, where social diversity manifests itself primarily in a decision between eating Thai or Vietnamese food for dinner, before reverently watching the latest SBS documentary about an ethnic minority group that mercifully lives multiple postcodes away from them.

The fact is that our prevailing enviable culture is not a mere accident, nor based upon Eastern mysticism or Asian civil codes, but is largely due to our Judaeo-Christian heritage — the dignity of the individual, the practice of both justice and mercy, the furthering of human creativity through technology, a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, and the betterment of society’s standards.

It is, perhaps, better to speak of multi-ethnicities, instead of cultures, as we have one Australian culture, and all imported creeds need to cleanly align with the mainstream; otherwise, they should be left at the door or called out as inferior.

Peter Waterhouse, Craigieburn, Vic

Adultery and politics

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You cannot choose your political sides by the personal moral failings of their leaders and members. There is not enough morality to go around, specially with the alpha male types who inhabit politics. We have here in Australia, represented by this story of the moment, a Deputy Prime Minister who has left his wife and four kids for someone else. This was the story, written tongue in cheek: Let’s recriminalise adultery. But one of the commenters did say this which said something worth saying.

How typical of you to mock marital fidelity; to mock marriage, in fact. But then, that was the whole point of SSM, wasn’t it? And how typical of you to be utterly, blithely, blindly unaware that there is anything wrong here.

I keep forgetting, though, that you suffer from libertarian autism. You can’t be expected to understand anything about non-autistic folks.

It is a hopeful sign that, quite apart from the unprincipled political opportunists, so many people do understand that there is something wrong here. An example just such as this was always the complete counter to the asinine you can’t help who you love slogan.

Meantime, in the US we have this: Trump’s Stormy Daniels problem gets worse. What’s the Stormy Daniels problem: only conservatives think adultery matters. And it does matter, but in the world as it is, unless we are dealing with circumstances well beyond the normal, it shouldn’t determine who you are going to vote for, since there is so much else at stake. But it is a point of vulnerability on the right, as the Roy Moore saga too clearly showed.

Sunrise in Pyongyang

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Not quite “Wake up, you sleepyhead”. From EVERY MORNING IN NORTH KOREA, THE MASSES ARE AWOKEN BY CREEPY SYNTH MUSIC BLASTING OVER LOUDSPEAKERS. Only a handful of comments at the site, but a quite interesting specimen of the mindset of the left. Marty must work for the ABC.

Marty Krog · 
Palma De Mallorca, Spain
JUst some more Western media hype painting a negative light over a culture they have no fucking understanding about, but just happy to the stir the shit for some Western agenda. Maybe a bit of chilled music in the morning will stop your retards from shooting each other at school.
Like · Reply · Sep 24, 2017 11:37am
Peggy Whitfield · 
Athens, Greece
Oh please. There are many criticisms to be made about the West but North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship, with concentration camps, torture and collective punishment. Maybe you should read the plethora of books there are written by North Korean refugees and the horror they had to endure and then come back and make an informed comment.
Like · Reply · Sep 24, 2017 12:11pm
 Marty Krog · 
Palma De Mallorca, Spain
Peggy Whitfield Not sure what makes you think I am uninformed, other than your own ignorance. Does Guantanomo Bay mean anything to you? And if you call them terrorists, then do a bit of reading yourself. They were illegally siezed and transported from their places of domicile as a result of 911 which we all know was really guilty of that shit show, and the invasion of Iraq under the false pretenses of WMD.
Like · Reply · Sep 24, 2017 3:52pm