Category Archives: Cultural

Manson and the totalitarian temptation

Posted on by
Reply

Two articles on the very same subject although superficially about entirely different things. There is first this: The Charles Manson Fallacy. The second is: 100 Years. 100 Million Lives. Think Twice.

Here is how the first article ends:

The potential for entire social movements to end up sympathizing with visibly pathological murderers with swastikas carved in their foreheads is a persistent potential. All you have to do is let down, for a brief moment, your simplest sense of right and wrong, perhaps because you pride yourself on being upset about some social issue….

Here is how the second one ends:

The stories of survivors paint a more vivid picture of communism than the textbooks my classmates have read. While we may never fully understand all of the atrocities that occurred under communist regimes, we can desperately try to ensure the world never repeats their mistakes. To that end, we must tell the accounts of survivors and fight the trivialization of communism’s bloody past.

My father left behind his parents, friends, and neighbors in the hope of finding freedom. I know his story because it is my heritage; you now know his story because I have a voice. One hundred million other people were silenced.

One hundred years later, let us not forget the history of the victims who do not have a voice because they did not survive the writing of their tales. Most importantly, let us not be tempted to repeat it.

Read them both, which I took down from Powerline Picks where they appeared separately but at the same time.

TO WHICH WE MAY NOW ADD THIS: Charles Manson’s Radical Chic which comes with this very telling subhead:

Some on the left adored him, before and after the murders.

And this is how the article begins:

The history of the postwar period is the history of the struggle against Communism. What’s sometimes forgotten — conveniently forgotten — is that our victory in that struggle was far from assured, and that a substantial swath of the Western intelligentsia and much of its celebrity culture was on the other side. It wasn’t just Jane Fonda and Noam Chomsky, Walter Duranty and Lincoln Steffens. (“I have been to the future,” Steffens wrote after a visit to the Soviet Union, “and it works.”) Eventually, 100 million people would die under Communism as part of the longest and widest campaign of mass murder in recorded human history. As a phenomenon of specifically nuclear terror, the Cold War lasted from 1949, when the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb thanks to the help of the American leftists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, until 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down.

Precisely in the middle of that period came the strange career of Charles Milles Manson, who has just died in a California hospital at the age of 83. Manson’s death, like his life, was wrapped up in the radical politics of the 1960s.

He died of natural causes, his execution having been set aside as part of the temporarily successful progressive campaign against the death penalty in the 1970s. Just as it is easy to forget how pro-Soviet the American Left was at times, it is easy to forget how pro-Manson American radicals were. “First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild!” That was the assessment of Bernardine Dohrn, the champagne radical who, with her husband, Bill Ayers, participated in a campaign of domestic terrorism, including bombings, and later became cozy with Barack Obama, hosting events for the aspiring politician in her home.

An old question of mine: what do you think of the 1960s – all good? all bad? or a bit of both. I know my answer but I’ll leave that for another time.

You have to be a fool to believe unverified allegations that come from the mainstream media

Posted on by
Reply

Remember Michelle Fields? Remember how the media were all agreed that Donald Trump’s campaign manager had thrown her to the ground? Remember how the videos soon after appeared proving she was a liar. Even then the media continued but when the evidence became so obvious that nothing had happened, it just stopped. No apology, no owning up that it was made up out of whole cloth. Just nothing said at all, and on they moved.

So move forward to today and we see not hypocrisy but the continuation of their out and out strategy of lying to harm Republicans in flogging issues which if the same is done by a Democrat there is nothing to be said. No sexual predator in politics is in the same league as Bill Clinton but no Democrat ever said a word while he was in a position to advance whatever agenda the left wished to see advanced. Falling for these things is a massive political weakness on the right. So we are now dealing with Roy Moore over what is certainly a series of lies being told about him in comparison with the visual evidence of sexual harassment and worse by Al Franken.

This is to go with the other photo of Franken pawing the breasts of this same woman. This is from the USO show in which Tweeden had said she had turned away from Franken having had his tongue rammed down her throat in the rehearsal he insisted on having. A predator, and unelectable as a Republican, but absolutely re-electable as a Democrat. This below is from The Washington Post via Allahpundit.

So here is the point. If you don’t want to elect sexual predators, never pay attention to the mainstream media. Donald Trump was among the few to finally get past the inanities of the right voting for their enemies because of some unproven and unprovable allegation by various women about what Donald Trump had supposedly done, which oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, these women had never previously mentioned. With Franken, even Tweeden doesn’t want him to leave the Senate. And you may be sure that if Franken had done this once this was not the sole occasion when something like this has happened.

Democrats have no morals to speak of, only appetites and a will to power. If Republican voters are going to continue to fall for these things time and again, we will be at the end of times before you know it and there will be no one there to defend the moral codes Democrats and their media enablers are using against you to kick you and your values to the curb.

Gladstonian liberalism is the answer

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not sure I know the question to which Cosmopolitanism Is the Answer, but whatever the question, it is the wrong answer for me. As it happens, these are things I have lately been thinking about myself having come across another article looking at these same issues but from a very different perspective. And while it is difficult to sort through the various labels one can put on one’s personal ideology, the closest I have been able to come up with for myself is “Gladstonian liberal” which is quite different from “classical liberal”. So let me take you to an article about the naming of things where “classical liberal” is the equivalent of insane while “conservative” represents prudential common sense.

The differences between the classical-liberal and conservative traditions have immense consequences for policy. Establishing democracy in Egypt or Iraq looks doable to classical liberals because they assume that human reason is everywhere the same, and that a commitment to individual liberties and free markets will arise rapidly once the benefits have been demonstrated and the impediments removed. Conservatives, on the other hand, see foreign civilizations as powerfully motivated—for bad reasons as well as good ones—to fight the dissolution of their way of life and the imposition of American values.

Integrating millions of immigrants from the Middle East also looks easy to classical liberals, because they believe virtually everyone will quickly see the advantages of American (or European) ways and accept them upon arrival. Conservatives recognize that large-scale assimilation can happen only when both sides are highly motivated to see it through. When that motivation is weak or absent, conservatives see an unassimilated migration, resulting in chronic mutual hatred and violence, as a perfectly plausible outcome.

Since classical liberals assume reason is everywhere the same, they see no great danger in “depreciating” national independence and outsourcing power to foreign bodies. American and British conservatives see such schemes as destroying the unique political foundation upon which their traditional freedoms are built.

Here is the definition of “Gladstonian liberal” from Wikipedia which seems accurate enough for me and is utterly distinct from the “classical” variety as defined above.

Gladstonian liberalism is a political doctrine named after the British Victorian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstonian liberalism consisted of limited government expenditure and low taxation whilst making sure government had balanced budgets and the classical liberal [that phrase again] stress on self-help and freedom of choice. Gladstonian liberalism also emphasised free trade, little government intervention in the economy and equality of opportunity through institutional reform. It is referred to as laissez-faire or classical liberalism in the UK and is often compared to Thatcherism.

It is also the essence of the economics and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. See his Principles of Political Economy and On Liberty where these things are spelled out.

Personal freedom and personal responsibility within a society of limited government, tolerance and open enquiry guided by an all pervading Judeo-Christian ethic are the core values of Gladstonian liberalism. And to go back to Wikipedia, here is the approach to foreign policy.

In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he approved of the occupation of Egypt by British forces in 1882. His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms.

Let me therefore go to the last para of the first article discussed for an interesting and enlightening comparison.

Brexit and Mr. Trump’s rise are the direct result of a quarter-century of classical-liberal hegemony over the parties of the right. Neither Mr. Trump nor the Brexiteers were necessarily seeking a conservative revival. But in placing a renewed nationalism at the center of their politics, they shattered classical liberalism’s grip, paving the way for a return to empiricist conservatism. Once you start trying to understand politics by learning from experience rather than by deducing your views from 17th-century rationalist dogma, you never know what you may end up discovering.

Labels do often get in the way but the core principles should be clear. In the modern world a “Gladstonian liberal” is best described as a conservative. But whatever you want to call the ideology, it is all that at present stands between us and the annihilation of Western civilisation and our way of life.

As long as we have mobile phones what difference does it make?

Posted on by
Reply

By Melanie Philips: The Deconstruction of Humanity. You will just have to read it for yourself. I’ll give you the first para, then the last plus one from the middle.

If you want a break from the spectacle of Britain tearing itself apart over leaving the European Union, you can upset yourself instead watching the spectacle of the western world tearing apart the very notion of what it is to be a human being. . . .

“Rigorous science”. How quaint that sounds. In our ideologically fluid world, that too is being washed away as we steadily dismantle not just the foundations of western culture, not just morality, not even just the primacy of reason but our very understanding of what makes us what we are.

Here’s the one from the middle. In her view this is the problem.

The ostensible aim of all this is to end discrimination, prejudice and social exclusion. This is untrue. The aim is unilaterally to change the entire basis of society from one governed by external moral rules and duties to one in which the only rule that has any authority is the duty to actualise our own inner potential and fulfil our own desires.

Could be. I actually think the left have run out of genuine problems to fix so are inventing distinctions to show how forward looking they are in comparison with everyone else. Whatever, it is the young and they are making the world in which they will have to live. Too bad for them.

MORE ON TOO BAD FOR THEM: This is Kurt Schlichter discussing At Least My Generation Will Have Our Revenge On The Millennials.

But while we’re still here together, with me owning stuff and you struggling to afford your daily kombucha smoothie, we face many shared challenges. There’s that giant debt, and there are those foreign people who want to kill us, and there is the terrifying fact that we are at each others’ throats here at home. We know how this plays out if we don’t fix it – bad for me, but super-bad for you. Maybe we should try and square things away. Maybe we should stop assuming the worst about each other, start thinking about what unites us instead of what divides us, and work together to make a better tomorrow. Maybe.

I just wish I thought it was funny, but things weren’t so great in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, it took more than a thousand years to get back to the same standard of living that had prevailed in the second century AD.

Gladstonian liberalism in the modern age

Posted on by
Reply

If I am going to get into personal labels, I am a Gladstonian liberal. So here we are with the naming of things where “liberal” is the equivalent of insane while “conservative” is prudential common sense:

The differences between the classical-liberal and conservative traditions have immense consequences for policy. Establishing democracy in Egypt or Iraq looks doable to classical liberals because they assume that human reason is everywhere the same, and that a commitment to individual liberties and free markets will arise rapidly once the benefits have been demonstrated and the impediments removed. Conservatives, on the other hand, see foreign civilizations as powerfully motivated—for bad reasons as well as good ones—to fight the dissolution of their way of life and the imposition of American values.

Integrating millions of immigrants from the Middle East also looks easy to classical liberals, because they believe virtually everyone will quickly see the advantages of American (or European) ways and accept them upon arrival. Conservatives recognize that large-scale assimilation can happen only when both sides are highly motivated to see it through. When that motivation is weak or absent, conservatives see an unassimilated migration, resulting in chronic mutual hatred and violence, as a perfectly plausible outcome.

Since classical liberals assume reason is everywhere the same, they see no great danger in “depreciating” national independence and outsourcing power to foreign bodies. American and British conservatives see such schemes as destroying the unique political foundation upon which their traditional freedoms are built.

Here is the definition of Gladstonian liberal from Wikipedia which seems accurate enough for me and is utterly and in every way distinct from the “classical” variety as defined above.

Gladstonian liberalism is a political doctrine named after the British Victorian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstonian liberalism consisted of limited government expenditure and low taxation whilst making sure government had balanced budgets and the classical liberal stress on self-help and freedom of choice. Gladstonian liberalism also emphasised free trade, little government intervention in the economy and equality of opportunity through institutional reform. It is referred to as laissez-faire or classical liberalism in the UK and is often compared to Thatcherism.

It is also the essence of the economics and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. See his Principles of Political Economy and On Liberty to see these things spelled out. (A modern version of the economics of Mill can be found in my Free Market Economics.)

Personal freedom and personal responsibility within a society of limited government, tolerance and open enquiry guided by an all pervading Judeo-Christian ethic. And to go back to Wikipedia, this is the foreign policy approach for a Gladstonian liberal.

In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he approved of the occupation of Egypt by British forces in 1882. His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms.

Let me therefore go to the last para of the first article discussed for an interesting and enlightening comparison.

Brexit and Mr. Trump’s rise are the direct result of a quarter-century of classical-liberal hegemony over the parties of the right. Neither Mr. Trump nor the Brexiteers were necessarily seeking a conservative revival. But in placing a renewed nationalism at the center of their politics, they shattered classical liberalism’s grip, paving the way for a return to empiricist conservatism. Once you start trying to understand politics by learning from experience rather than by deducing your views from 17th-century rationalist dogma, you never know what you may end up discovering.

Labels will get in the way but I think the core principles are clear. And it need hardly be pointed out that the worst imaginable rationalist dogma is found under the heading of “socialism”, the absolute antithesis of Gladstonian liberalism which is socialism’s most intractable enemy.

“No-one else could pull this off, except Trump”

Posted on by
Reply

Necessary too.

This is the brief story that comes with the corroborating video above: A Powerful Message – President Trump Delivers Remarks in Beijing’s Great Hall…. PDT commences at the ten minute mark and he does not mince words.

President Trump and President Xi delivered remarks to the international audience in The Great Hall in Beijing China, and suddenly the word “remarks” seems inappropriate.

President Xi Jinping delivered the customary speech, albeit with nuance specific to the guest and audience, with a carefully worded assembly familiar to almost anyone who has read speeches and messaging approved by Beijing. As customary within the cunning assembly of those words; the state media apparatus then tells the consuming audience what they mean. Or at least that’s the familiar pattern.

However, then came Trump…

President Trump followed President Xi’s remarks with a speech as deliberate and unambiguous as the internal audience would ever fathom hearing. President Trump respectfully pulled no punches in his direct and emphatic style; stating that China needed to engage in, well, to use China’s familiar wording, “correct thinking” on a variety of issues – including trade and their necessary responsibility toward North Korea.

No-one else could pull this off, except Trump. Not that way. The best part is always the emphatic part at the end. President Trump gives the look saying: well, that’s that then; that’s all I’ve got to say about that… smiles bigly, and the diplomatic opponent tries not to look smaller than they were ten minutes earlier.

Not that we should neglect any of this either:

TRUMP DELIVERS: 37 major deals US firms signed with Chinese entities during visit…

Declares New World-Trade Order…

And then this, the President’s granddaughter singing in Mandarin 特朗普外孙女唱中文歌

Neither the first bit nor the second would have been brought to you aside from here at the far corner of the web. They see no version of sense other than their own and when their designated enemies help make the world a better and safer place, they have no response other than to shut their ears and bay at the moon.

‘It’s what they get taught at school’

Posted on by
Reply

I’ll give you an excerpt from an article in the latest Campus Review, which is sent out to all of us teaching in higher education. This is the least worst part of the story but read it all, and then you can tell me how true this is or isn’t: When did human rights become racist? A reflection on relativism in Australian education.

I had always assumed that most humanities teachers in this country, regardless of political leanings, were on the same boat.

The first signs that this was not the case, and that something was seriously amiss, came some years ago, when I began lecturing in Australian history. My 17 and 18-year-old students, most of whom were studying to become teachers, were arguing in their essays that Hitler should not be judged, and that we should always uphold a balanced view about history. Judging Hitler (yes, Hitler) was unbalanced. Paper after paper argued that there was no truth, just perspectives, all of which were equally valid or equally questionable. The sheer amount of teenagers upholding this hollow and extreme cultural and moral relativist credo alarmed me. I made it a point to clarify the distinction between historical ‘balance’ and ‘genocidal leaders’, but the same argument kept coming up, essay after essay. I mentioned this to a senior colleague, who shrugged her shoulders and exclaimed ‘it’s what they get taught at school’.

From there on it gets only worse. But that, of course, is only my view. That these people are moral monsters is also my view as well.

The return of Anita Hill

Posted on by
Reply

From Anita Hill’s testimony about Clarence Thomas:

Hill alleged lurid details about her time with Thomas at the Department of Education: “He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes… On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess.” Hill also said that the following incident occurred later after they had both moved to new jobs at the EEOC: “Thomas was drinking a Coke in his office, he got up from the table at which we were working, went over to his desk to get the Coke, looked at the can and asked, ‘Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?'”

So now we have this: Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32 – 34 years ago but not mentioned until now – and from The Washington Post, as untrustworthy as source as could be imagined. Here’s the only part I will quote with the bit in bold quite to the point:

In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations.

“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore, now 70, said.

The campaign said in a subsequent statement that if the allegations were true they would have surfaced during his previous campaigns, adding “this garbage is the very definition of fake news.”

No wonder the left laughs at the right, so politically stupid it is almost beyond idiocy. A similar story about a Democrat would not even make it into the press.

SOME FURTHER COMMENT AND LINKS: Picked up at Ace of Spades.

From the last of the stories:

The White House says President Donald Trump believes Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore “will do the right thing and step aside” if sexual misconduct allegations against him are true.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters traveling with Trump in Asia that the president believes a “mere allegation” — especially one from many years ago — shouldn’t be allowed to destroy a person’s life.

But Sanders says: “The president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside.”

And from J.E Sefton at Ace of Spades who thinks as I do:

The weekend is here and with it the cold slap in the face of yesterday’s accusations against Roy Moore. I probably reflect the sentiments of most if not all of you in the Horde in that my initial reaction was to call this an abject, unmitigated smear to derail Moore’s candidacy and throw a gimme seat to the Democrats. I still feel this way, and in fact, considering the absolutely disgraceful reaction from the GOP, I would not be at all surprised if it is they who were behind this. I’m looking at the be-goitered, flabby face of Mitch McConnell. The GOP pumped millions into that race to install Establishment lackey Luther Strange and he was rejected. . . .

Unlike the GOP, the MFM, Dems and others, who it’s safe to say couldn’t give two shits about the alleged victims but are more interested in derailing Moore for political gain, guilty or innocent, I will stand by Roy Moore until it is absolutely proven beyond any doubt that he is guilty of a crime or of behavior that would have obviated my support at the outset of his candidacy. Sadly, as the shabby Dick Gephardt would say, it’s not about guilt or innocence, it’s all about the seriousness of the charge. So guilty or innocent, odds are Moore may be sunk. That stinks to high heaven and I hope he can overcome what is now a cheap, desperate smear.

For myself, any evidence of any kind would be a help: a note he wrote, a photo someone took, an earlier application to the courts. Anything at all because without at least that, no one outside those utterly on the inside can enter public life without the certainty that some allegation of this kind will be made.

A commentary on the political consequences of lives that have been emptied of God

Posted on by
Reply

An article filled with insight in an area of the deepest confusion. This is only part of the actual title, but gets to what is the issue at hand: Many Americans Are Suffering From a Mental Disorder. A long article but addresses the question why so many Americans, and it applies pretty well in every Western community, why so many vote in ways that harm themselves as a means of harming others. I will take excerpts that provide the central thread of the argument but it is worth reading through in full. There is more to it than this.

Socialism is a political philosophy that stands opposed to the principles of freedom America once valued. These have changed over time due to the influence of Marxism and materialistic, nihilistic German philosophies, which have subverted our education system for decades. It’s also due to the rejection of Judeo-Christian ethics and the Enlightenment philosophies of John Locke, Adam Smith, and Montesquieu that work together to ensure liberty. . . .

Mises says we make a grave mistake if we try to reason with people who embrace anti-liberty views. This is because opposition to one’s own freedom doesn’t stem from reason. It’s actually a “pathological mental attitude,” born of resentment, “envious malevolence,” and “a neurasthenic condition” Mises called this the “Fourier complex”. . . .

The Fourier complex is rooted in psychological disruption. No amount of reason or life lessons will bring light to the darkened mind. “What is involved in this case is a serious disease of the nervous system, a neurosis, which is more properly the concern of the psychologist than of the legislator,” Mises writes. . . .

But we still have to ask — how is it that this deranged mental condition, this “Fourierism,” this love of socialism, is now so prevalent? Why are people prone to fantasy instead of reality? Do not doubt the fact that socialism and Marxism (despite its highfaluting rhetoric) are based in fantasy.

Neither of these ideologies can construct the utopia they promise. Even to formulate the hope, they have to suspend reason by making two assumptions: First, they assume that all the material of production in the world is there for our disposal and in such abundance that it doesn’t need to be economized. . . .

Second, they assume that suddenly and magically, work will change from “a burden into a pleasure,” and people will be overjoyed with working at meaningless tasks for others and not their own private use. They’ll be perfectly content, just like Winston Smith and his comrades in 1984. In this world of ever-flowing goods and a love for work and equal shares despite unequal abilities and contributions, they will find utopia.

This is the “saving lie” of socialism; the one neurotics believe to be true. And because of this, those who are frustrated by their own disappointments in life and who want to tear down everyone else in the name of egalitarian fantasies can console themselves of their despair in this world. . . .

“Socialist authors promise not only wealth for all, but also happiness in love for everybody, the full physical and spiritual development of each individual, the unfolding of great artistic and scientific talents in all men,” Mises writes. “The socialist paradise will be the kingdom of perfection, populated by completely happy supermen. All socialist literature is full of such nonsense. But it is just this nonsense that wins it the most supporters.” . . .

The real necessities of life that create inequalities are rejected for a fantasy of happiness, social justice, and uniformity of wealth and existence. The material realities of life are ignored. Laws, consequences, value of property, reasonable outcomes, one’s own needs, even science — these are rejected for a dream: the socialist dream that is never realized.

This is the hell into which many of our fellow Americans are plunging. The only way to save them is with the “saving truth.” They need to live as God created them to live, in balance as taught by true religion, not by the false religion of Marx. Only when they understand that they live in the here and now but can also hope for eternity; that they are to work responsibly according to the necessities of life and dream of a better life one day; and that they derive value, not only from material goods, but also from spiritual realities — that there’s more to life than the accumulation of things, and yet accumulation of things is still part of life — will they be happy. And most of all they will be free.

And if that is the problem and also the only solution, then there is a problem indeed but no practical answer. The void and despair in the millions of devastated lives will never be filled, with political consequences of the darkest kind always an immediate possibility.