Category Archives: Cultural

People on the left have no idea how people on the right actually think

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This was quite good: Titania McGrath and the Politics of Wokeness: An Interview with Andrew Doyle. In case you do not know, this is who Titania McGrath is:

In April 2018, Oxford-educated comedian and journalist Andrew Doyle created a satirical Twitter persona, an “activist,” “healer,” and “radical intersectionalist poet” who self-identifies as “selfless and brave.” Titania, an imaginary amalgam of all the worst excesses in the modern social justice movement, fancies herself a voice for minorities of all kinds (whether they know they agree with her or not). What she lacks in self-awareness, she makes up for in conviction.

And this is who Andrew Doyle is, what he did and how he thinks:

Doyle is among a growing number of classical liberals who have simply had enough…. Comedy and culture have been so strangled by political correctness that he is “at that point where I feel that it would be morally wrong to be silent” about the crisis of free public discourse in the West.”

Doyle decided to create a fake character on Twitter—a satirical character who would mock the worst excesses of the social justice movement. So, to that end, “I thought one of her characteristics should be a devotion to fourth-wave intersectional feminism. In which case it made sense that she was female and white—because a lot of what passes for social justice activism is actually rich white people telling poor black people what they should be thinking. It’s a kind of soft racism, I think: a very patronizing view of minorities. So I thought she should come from privilege. And so she’s very rich, she comes from an independently wealthy family, but she’s determined to express how oppressed and persecuted she is at every opportunity, and also to attempt to censor anyone who disagrees with her on any point whatsoever. This is the kind of entitlement and narcissism that you see among social justice activists—it’s why they’re not prepared to debate. They can’t conceive that anyone who sees the world differently is anything other than evil, and they think the world has to change around them to suit their particular preferences.

And the only part of this that is actually remarkable is that Doyle believes he has stumbled upon something that was until then unknown. In actual fact, it is near enough what most of us think about people on the left. This is how he characterised himself:

In the question of where I stand on the political spectrum, I think there is an objective method of assessment which I can do nothing about: I think if you were to write down all of my political views on various things I would come out more left-wing than right. Certainly in terms of economic principles I’m more to the left, in terms of welfare, in terms of nationalism: I understand nationalist sympathies but I don’t feel them personally. That’s more an instinctive thing, but that definitely pushes me more to the Left as well.

He seems to think that the welfare state was not almost entirely the product of the right in politics. He is trapped in that absurd belief that the politics of the right are the ethics of Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve just before he went to bed. Quite vague on nationalism but given his value system, there is little doubt he could only ethically function in a nation state that has been built on the principles found only within the West. He then adds this:

I’d say I’m quite culturally conservative, however. I believe in high standards of education, because I think that adult autonomy depends on effective socialization in youth. So you need to have a rigorous school system, and children need to have an awareness of the classics and be taught the classics. I think art history, for instance, should be embedded at a primary-school level: not “let’s see what you can create with these paints”; I think you need to learn the classics. That’s a more traditionally right-wing viewpoint. I also believe in politeness, and decorum, and high standards and that kind of thing, which I think might be more associated with the Right.

That’s exactly why people such as myself enjoy what he writes because he looks at things the same way we do. George Orwell, for example, his essays especially, are read almost entirely by people such as myself.

You know, someone like George Orwell was a cultural conservative. His essay “The Lion and the Unicorn” is a robust defense of cultural conservatism, but at the same time he’s very much on the Left. He’s actually a sort of canonized figure of the Left, so there is room for cultural conservatism within traditionally leftist thought. I don’t think one excludes the other.

Orwell was on the left in the same way as Doyle, because his beliefs happened to coincide with the people he thinks he is distinct from in their views. Such as here:

I think the Left and Right should agree on the basic liberal principles of free expression, free discourse, and free thought. But also we need a shared social contract of how we address each other and how we tackle these issues. It doesn’t work if one side of the debate is just screaming and covering their ears. Nothing can be achieved that way.

Absolutely right again. He has just covered the views of John Stuart Mill. But who does he think are doing the screaming and are covering their ears? Which side of politics is that? Who is he describing here?

I think one of the first things you have to do is be discerning about who you talk to. You know, let’s have the debate with those who are willing and capable of debate, and let’s all agree that those who are incapable of debate should be ignored, because they won’t have anything to add. And then we raise the bar of political discourse. But we have major mainstream politicians saying these ridiculously woke things, and saying these incredibly intolerant things, and calling people Fascists and Nazis and things like that. When that’s happening, it’s like debating a child. It’s not going to achieve anything. So we basically just need adults back in the game. We need the adults to take control.

That is how I think of Antifa and the left in general, and he even uses the term “woke”. As I see it, he is describing the modern American left down to its bootstraps. If that is his intention, then he and I are on the same side of the fence absolutely and without question. Whether he likes it or not, he is a man of the right as these things are structured in the Year of the Lord 2020.

Global warming/climate change is a con in which half the population are taken for absolute fools

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“I have tested Uri Geller in my laboratory at King’s College, London University, with specially-designed apparatus.

“The Geller effect – of metal bending – is clearly not brought about by fraud. It is so exceptional that it presents a crucial challenge to modern science, and could even destroy the latter if no explanation becomes available.”

Professor John Taylor of
King’s College, London

I was chatting to the friend who had sent me Hanrahan’s doom-laden words which are summarised in Wikipedia as follows:

The poem describes the recurrent natural cycle of droughts, floods and bushfires in rural Australia as seen by “Hanrahan”, a pessimistic man of Irish descent.

The question we were discussing was how to deal with people who actually believe global warming and climate change are genuine problems. He is looking for arguments to help others see the light. I, on the other hand, long ago reached the conclusion that there is absolutely no reason for the slightest concern, and have therefore stopped arguing with people, other than just for fun, partly because there is nothing for me to learn, other than to further confirm for myself that these people are unbelievable fools who may yet create havoc on a grand scale across the Western world. The main reason, however, is because these people are deaf to reason. I am always open to persuasion should some forecast actually turn out to be accurate and the seas really do start to rise, which to me is a .001% probability. In the meantime, I think anyone who treats global warming as a genuine problem has some emotional deficiency in their lives that need to be propped up by these fantastic beliefs. I do not doubt their sincerity.

There is, of course, an actual problem, which is that people really do believe that global warming is a genuine issue. This is in and of itself a major political problem since because of these beliefs, governments are putting in place all kinds of idiotic policies that will make us much worse off. As for the supposed problem that works them up so much, I think of these people as naive, scientific innocents, who have not done any genuine research and in any case do not know how to investigate such issues properly. I do not doubt there is more carbon in the atmosphere than there had been a few years ago, and that for a time there had been a gentle upturn in global temperatures which may even be continuing. But I do not believe they are related in any way that matters. More importantly, nothing that will ever happen to the weather will cause the seas to rise or in any way threaten any of us, other than in the ways weather has always affected us in the past – see Hanrahan.

My way of arguing with global swarmists is, in part, to remind them of Uri Geller and his supernatural ability to bend spoons, an ability that had been verified by scientists. And by chance, after we parted I came upon in a secondhand bookshop Uri Geller’s 1975 personal account of his life and abilities, My Story. And there, as the opening quote on the very first page, set off all on its own, is the quote you see above. Not only had his abilities been authenticated at the University of London, more famously he had had his abilities assessed and validated by scientists at Stanford University. As you read the passages below from Geller’s book, bear in mind the notoriously bogus “97% of scientists” statistic. By the way, anyone who quotes the 97% stat who has not examined its origins through the eyes of sceptics is asking to be fleeced. But back to Geller:

“I had been going through scientific tests in the United States at the Stanford Research Institute at Menlo Park, California. The first results had confirmed that something strange and new was happening, both with the metal objects involved and with telepathy experiments. The researchers there had indicated that, if the tests continued to check out as they had, they would have a serious effect on modern science.” (Geller 1975: 14)

That really was the case which I vividly recall. Geller had been examined by a bunch of scientists at the SRI and they were ready to write a new chapter in the history of physics. So how did the public react to all this? Geller describes a poll undertaken by the Daily Mail. You ready?

“The tabulation showed that 95.5 per cent of those voting believed I had genuine psychic powers, and only 4.5 per cent indicated they thought I was just using showman’s tricks. In announcing the results, the Daily Mail said: ‘Time and time again in the many letters sent to us, readers say that while they were skeptical at first, it was the Stanford Research Institute evidence which finally convinced them.'” (Geller 1975: 68-69)

He had a great magic act, fooled lots of people, has recently been inducted into the Magicians Hall of Fame, and has a net worth of $20 million. Not bad for a magician who has essentially only four tricks in his repertoire.

Meanwhile, the same gullible fools across every level of society – rich or poor, educated and dropout, politically left and right – buy this global warming idiocy, which is making many an entrepreneur far more than a measly $20m. It has become a way to academic fame and fortune. It will eventually disappear when nothing ever happens, and more important issues come along, such as the coronavirus, or perhaps something worse. I suspect that for a lot of people there is a level of embarrassment in discovering how gullible they have been. In the meantime, there is the real Geller-effect – being conned into believing absolutely anything on the authority of “science”, unlike the original Geller effect which is a zombie-like belief that if a scientist says something, or is reported to have said something, then it must be true.

Below are videos surrounding Geller’s appearance on the Johnny Carson show in the 1970s. Two things are particularly noteworthy. First is that when the props were set up by a professional magician – in this case Jame Randi – Geller’s abilities absolutely failed. Second, and this is for all you young folks out there, Johnny Carson was smoking during the show!

First, here is James Randi explaining how so many are tricked.

This is a straight up excerpt from the show.

And if you are interested in seeing the whole thing, here’s the full show.

I think of the belief in global warming as equivalent to believing that Uri Geller could bend spoons with the power of his mind. The science is never settled.

And for added interest in how acute scientists can be, here is the link to the recording of the experiments at Stanford in 1974.

Some things don’t change

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          SAID HANRAHAN – John O’Brien (1919)

“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s lookin’ crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”

“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.

“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.

“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
“>There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak–
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”

A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
“>And each man squatted on his heel,
“>And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want a inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.

It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”

And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.

And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

 

Who will do it if the National Organization of Women doesn’t?

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Liberty Quote
So far as Feminism seeks to adjust the legal position of woman to that of man, so far as it seeks to offer her legal and economic freedom to develop and act in accordance with her inclinations, desires, and economic circumstancesso far it is nothing more than a branch of the great liberal movement, which advocates peaceful and free evolution.
— Ludwig von Mises

Appropriately, this was the Liberty Quote as I came to write. And sorry to be trolling through this again, but this has just come up: A War Over Sex Work is Raging Inside The Nation’s Biggest Feminist Group.

Because of this storied history, when NOW takes a stance on an issue, women around the country listen. This year, the group mounted a nationwide campaign against what it called ”sex trafficking and exploitation.” The campaign aimed to “end the demand” for sex work by criminalizing pimps and johns (or in NOW speak, “purchasers of sex acts” and those who benefit financially from the sale of other people for sex.”) A key component of the campaign was opposing the D.C. decriminalization bill.

The D.C. chapter, however, was not on board. After seeing Van Pelt’s testimony in October, the board fired off a letter to the national organization, blasting the president’s “misleading and dehumanizing language,” and the “breach of autonomy and assertion that this language represents DC NOW’s views.”

“Going forward, we ask that that National NOW modify their language to reflect the terms currently accepted and used in the sex worker community and by progressive organizations that show respect for all women and their choices,” they wrote in the letter, first reported by Gay City News.

In Washington everyone sells themselves to the highest bidder, but jokes aside, legalising prostitution seems a sell-out in any attempt to protect and promote women. Other than we patriarchal men, who will do it if the National Organization of Women doesn’t?

The Israeli peace proposal in the context of Israeli politics

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I cannot say that I pay close attention to Israeli politics and may have been spoiled by not needing to since Benjamin Netanyahu became Prime Minister. There have been quite a few events over the last few months with the peace proposal with the Palestinians occurring simultaneously with the difficulties in creating a stable new government. The  interesting part of the peace proposal is that it is not really for negotiations. So far as I can tell, so far as the Palestinians are concerned, it is a take it as is, make some helpful suggestions, or it will be imposed it on you as it is. What I did not know is that the rival to Netanyahu is yet another fool seeking to accommodate the people who would murder every Israeli if they got the chance. This is the situation reported by Israel National News, which has been edited down by John Hinderaker at Powerline

Without our homeland [Judea and Samaria], we have no existence, we are left hanging – we have no past, we have no future. This is our identity and our legacy, and our future is here. Therefore, our enemies are trying to uproot us from the heart of our homeland. They will not succeed. We are here, and we will always remain here.

After the great euphoria of the Six Day War, a dangerous perspective became entrenched in the left. According to this perspective, Instead of fighting for Judea and Samaria, we need to give them up. They claimed that if we give these lands to our enemies, they will do us a favor and make peace with our existence. They said ‘land for peace’ and we received ‘land for terror’ – buses exploding, restaurants exploding, hotels exploding. The wave of weakness reached a magnitude such that a Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, was willing to give the Western Wall to the Palestnians. The same Olmert, friend and close adviser of [Blue and White Chairman MK] Benny Gantz, is planning to go soon to [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Mahmoud Abbas so that they can work together against President Trump’s ‘deal of the century.’
***
If for years this is what the Jews heard, what will the nations of the world say? They said and say the same thing exactly: Pull back, pull back, pull back. From my first day in public life I rejected this idea outright and I fought against it with all my strength from my first job in the United Nations. … But the demands for Israel to withdraw kept growing, and they reached their peak in the eleven years when I stood with my head held high against two US administrations. They worked against us, with the unending support of the left and Israel’s media, who always demanded that I withdraw and compromise.

I’ll tell you something I haven’t said until now. After the funeral of [former Israeli President] Shimon Peres, a senior US figure sent me a message: ‘If you want such a great funeral, you need to start giving in.’ I told her: ‘I’m not worried about my funeral, I’m worried about preventing the funeral of my country.’

I succeeded in standing up to all of the enormous pressure, because I have the ability to speak before tens of millions in the American public. For dozens of years, I’ve been speaking with them in their language, and they believe me and believe in me. Therefore, I can have an influence for the good of our country. The strongest influence in the US is public opinion, and anyone who cannot influence public opinion there will end up giving in to pressure.

Three years ago, we received a golden opportunity to change the path of history: President Trump was elected – a personal friend of mine for many years, and the greatest friend who Israel has ever had in the White House.

I saw this as an opportunity to move from defensive to offensive, and use a historic opportunity. Our rivals did not understand. When Trump wanted to visit Israel, three of Gantz’s party members signed an appeal calling to boycott Trump’s arrival. Benny Gantz’s senior advisers, Ronen Tzur and Joel Benenson, compared President Trump – the best president ever for Israel – to Hitler. …

For three years we have worked closely with President Trump and his staff. I have spoken with him about leaving the Iran deal, about Jerusalem, about the Golan Heights, about Judea and Samaria, and to my delight the policies did indeed change, thanks to his courage. At first he left the Iran deal, then he recognized Jerusalem, moved the Embassy, recognized our sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and recently agreed to apply Israeli law to Judea and Samaria.

Last week we reached the climax: The deal of the century. It includes a historic revolution. Until now, all the diplomatic plans required Israel to agree to make real concessions. They called it ‘gestures.’ The Palestinians were not required to give anything. Now the exact opposite has happened: Israel is receiving real things, and the Palestinians are required to fulfill a list of demands. Whether or not they fulfill those requirements, Israel will receive US backing to apply Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas and over all of the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria – all of them, without exception.

We’re in the midst of mapping the area that according to the Trump plan will be part of the State of Israel. It’s a lot of land. We will lead this, and President Trump will agree to it. I trust him completely, and I trust myself completely. But I don’t trust [Blue and White Chairman MK] Benny Gantz. If it were up to Gantz – it would not happen.

With Gantz, we will have the loss of the century, instead of the deal of the century. He wants to implement the deal of the century with international backing. Will the United Nations agree? Will the European Union? Will [Blue and White leader MK] Yair Lapid, who wants to expel 80,000-90,000 settlers? Let’s say all of them agree, which will not happen: Even then Gantz will need the agreement of Ahmad Tibi, with whom he almost formed a government and without whom he has no government.

Women as sex objects

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You’ve come a long way, baby etc: J. Lo’s crotch-pride was a studied rebuke of Trump’s America. Weird to find myself back at the Super Bowl half time show, but this article on the back page of today’s Sunday Age reminds me how tribal and ignorant politics is. Feminism was once about pointing out that there was more to a girl’s life than sex appeal and adornment. I find this such sexist trash that it has truly made me angry. Written by someone by name of Jacqueline Maley. Might say that for someone who was interested in the game itself, this is in almost every way a fantastically ignorant piece of writing. Some excerpts:

As all but one of Trump’s Republican colleagues were preparing to vote against his impeachment in the US Senate – abandoning duty for cowardice – two Latina women stood in front of 102 million American viewers and performed a joyous and studied critique of Trump’s America….

It was political, but it was also a shout of joy in a dark time. Sometimes quite literally – the Children’s Chorus of Miami, a troupe of little girls led by J. Lo’s daughter Emme, rose from the darkness to sing the chorus of J. Lo’s 1999 hit Let’s Get Loud.

For a moment we saw a vision of a world where little girls are allowed to get loud, and it was glorious.

Jennifer Lopez upset the tabloid moralists with her performance at the Super Bowl.

The reality that Maley doesn’t seem to get is that this is actually the trashing of women that people such as myself object to. Why Maley doesn’t object is because she is so confused by her tribal membership on the left, that everything that once mattered has become invisible.

So let me bring this up to date. This is the definition of Sexual objectification from Wikipedia:

Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person as a mere object of sexual desire. Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Objectification is most commonly examined at the level of a society, but can also refer to the behavior of individuals and is a type of dehumanization.

And this is the picture plus text that comes with the definition:

Women in a bikini contest are valued by their body and sexual appeal over other attributes.

Compare and contrast this picture with the one above.

Not confusing just self-hatred

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Depressing stuff, found at Instapundit.

SULTAN KNISH ON WHAT’S LEFT OF ENGLAND:

Muslim sex grooming gangs, like drugs or prostitution, are too widespread to be enforced out of existence because, like college students and pot, the culture doesn’t accept that they are wrong.

The police did nothing because these were not isolated crimes by criminals, but clashes of morals and values between two communities, one of which does not believe that child rape is wrong because its sacred texts tell it that Mohammed married Aisha and consummated his marriage when she was 9.

There are nearly 2 million child marriages in Pakistan. The notion that a woman’s consent to sexual relations matters is an utterly foreign concept in a culture where unaccompanied women are fair game.

The child rapists did not believe that their actions were wrong under Islamic law. And they weren’t.

The Manchester City Council and the GMP just accepted this reality as they have accepted it so often. They buried the minutes, shut down the investigation, and walked away from the screams of the girls.

They did it for multiculturalism, integration, and community relations. They did it for social justice.

We know that no real action was taken because the girls were troubled. They didn’t matter. And their bodies and lives could be sacrificed for the greater good.

The real tragedy is not that the rapists didn’t understand it was wrong. It’s that the UK no longer does.
Indeed.

8Posted at 6:24 pm by Glenn Reynolds 
.
These were found in the comments.

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Plus this:

It’s impossible to do anything as a lone parent (some tried, and were prosecuted for it). It’s also impossible to organize (because any self-conscious collective organization by White British is prevented by the State, and lambasted by the media as low status). There is literally nothing anyone can do until and unless either our traitorous elites and ruling class have a change of heart, or there’s a revolution (which will only happen if and when this sort of thing actually touches everyone’s life, which will be the case probably by about 2100, when Whites are minorities in Western Europe, the States, etc.).

Look to what’s happening in the States: there’s already a low-key race war been going on between Blacks and Whites in the US (e.g., whites are about 200 times more likely to be attacked by blacks than blacks by whites), and nobody does anything about it. There’s as much of a code of omerta about it in the States (and as much massaging of facts and statistics by politicians and the media) as there has been about the Muslim child rape scandal in the UK.

“Our difficulties come from an unwarrantable mood of self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals”

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“The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within.

“They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength.

“Our difficulties come from an unwarrantable mood of self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals.

“They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.

“But what have they to offer but vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias.

“Nothing can save Our Country if she will not save herself.”

Winston Churchill, St George’s Day 1933

The China syndrome

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This is a full reprint of John Hinderaker’s post today at Powerline: THE CHINA MYTH EXPOSED. It’s not the Chinese that is the problem but the country. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are Chinese and free, the latter two having been colonies of England. They have both freedom and prosperity. China has neither, and never will.

From early in our nation’s history, America’s intellectuals have mostly looked down on their own country and yearned for it to be like someplace else–someplace more sophisticated, and more in tune with “modern” intellectual currents, whatever they might be at the moment. That is a long history, which I will skip over. In our own time, American intellectuals have claimed that Soviet Russia, Germany and Japan were harbingers of the future that the U.S. needed to imitate. In each case, the point was that we had to shed our archaic freedoms and enter the brave new world of central planning under the control–benign, of course!–of intellectuals and bureaucrats. Strangely, however, American free enterprise has managed to outlast and surpass all of those supposedly more advanced challengers.

Most recently, China has been the favored nation of the future. It has the advantage over Germany and Japan of being straightforwardly authoritarian (if no longer exactly Communist), which endeared it to anti-democratic liberals like Tom Friedman. Thus, liberals have eagerly calculated the future time when China’s GDP–or alleged GDP, as dictatorships have always been better at producing statistics than goods and services–would surpass ours. Given that China has three times our population, that would not seem to be a signal accomplishment. Nevertheless, liberals looked forward to it.

There was always something a little half-hearted about China adulation, however. When I was a kid, China was synonymous with poverty. Mothers really did say: “Eat your brussels sprouts! There are lots of starving children in China who would love to have them.” In 1979, China opened itself to foreign investment, and thousands of American companies built factories there over the succeeding decades, drawn mainly by the lure of cheap labor.

Cheap labor, of course, wasn’t always effective labor. One of the major cases of the later stage of my career as a lawyer arose out of the construction of a professional sports facility in the Midwest. A Japanese company won the contract to fabricate and erect the stadium’s roof, and in order to save money, subcontracted the fabrication to a Chinese factory that, in later testimony, was described as “medieval.” The result was a disaster. The quality of the fabrication was so poor that the Japanese company eventually spent more money correcting fabrication errors in the U.S.–for a while, you couldn’t find a welder in the Midwestern states who wasn’t working on the repair project–than it had paid for the fabrication in the first place. But there was no recourse, as China essentially did not have a legal system.

Then, too, Americans who visited China did not report that it was an incipient paradise. (Unlike liberals who visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s.) For one thing, in most of the country there was no such thing as what we call a bathroom. That made the environment a little hard to romanticize.

Still, China was viewed as a major geopolitical player, and American administrations kowtowed to it. The Chinese engaged in wholesale theft of American and European intellectual property, without compunction. The country’s trade practices were denounced as illegal and unfair, but nothing came of it. Only when Donald Trump became president did our country begin to assert its rights and interests against the Chinese dictatorship.

Which brings us to the current coronavirus outbreak. Once again, China is the source of a rather bizarre viral illness. It arose, apparently, in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The source of the virus is believed to be either bats or snakes that were bought for consumption in the Wuhan market in a “warm” state–that is, freshly slaughtered. The virus apparently mutated and jumped from bats or snakes to humans.

In China, not only snakes and bats, but also rats and bugs–e.g., scorpions–are frequently eaten. Being no cultural relativist, I assume that no one eats snakes, bats, rats or scorpions if he or she has a better alternative. In Venezuela, for instance, no one dreamed of hunting rats for food until that country’s socialist government destroyed Venezuela’s economy and reduced the citizenry to penury. So China’s continuing poverty has now created a world-wide public health problem.

I could be wrong; it has happened once or twice. But I suspect that the current public health crisis spells the end of China envy among American intellectuals. The context, of course, is the Trump administration’s standing up to China’s dictators. Like Toto, Trump has pulled back the curtain on the Chinese fraud. To coin a phrase, one might say that China’s economic “juggernaut” is in fact a paper tiger.

Someday, China may be a free country with a free economy. Until that day comes, the only lesson we can learn from the Chinese government is what to avoid.

As if The Life of Bryan could be made today

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From Terry Jones: Python and Renaissance man.

First and foremost, Jones will be remembered as a Python, with his directorial tour de force, Life of Brian (1979), the pinnacle of his achievements. At the time, the film – which told the story of a man, born on the same day, and next door to, Jesus Christ, who finds himself mistaken for the Messiah – won plenty of plaudits, but also plenty of opprobrium, particularly from the Christian right. Thirty-nine local authorities refused to screen it. Those cinemas that did were picketed by evangelical groups.

The images of crucifixion, in particular, were considered exciting and groundbreaking, or sacrilegious and beyond the pale, depending on your viewpoint. The scandal came to a head in a TV debate – still worth watching – in which Palin and Cleese effortlessly deconstructed Catholic journalist and satirist Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood.