Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

Religious freedom is what every religious group concedes to every other religious group, not just what they receive in return

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Below is a link to Dr Augusto Zimmerman’s latest article in The Spectator Australia.

The Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, is calling on the Prime Minister to push for new laws to greater protect Muslims against so-called “Islamophobia”; that is, the strong criticism of the Islamic religion. He notoriously states that Section 18C should be amended so as to allow Muslims to receive the same level of legal protection afforded to ethnic groups.

If such an appalling demand were to be attended, then the final outcome would be to outlaw our constitutional freedom of political communication if such communication may be displeasing to the inflated sensitivities of radical religionists. As Fairfax journalist David Crowe points out in the Sydney Morning Herald, “The obvious danger is a blasphemy law – if not in name, then in effect. At what point does speaking out against a religion turn into a form of discrimination that should be stopped?”

Just to remind, this is the same Muslim leader who has criticised a secular judge (Justice Fagan of the NSW Supreme Court) for daring to ask why these leaders often fail to disavow the “belligerent” verses of the Koran, thus weakening the convictions of Islamic terrorists. Dr Mohammed was adamant that Koranic verses can never be criticised by whoever the person might be, including the verses in the Koran that objectively promote anti-Semitism and religious violence.

The rest of Dr Zimmermann’s article is here.

What is the legal and ethical answer?

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Let me see if I can put my point in reply this way.

Suppose I start up a blog on some platform and it runs for a few years.

Then suppose whoever runs the blog’s platform decides that they do not like the contents of the blog.

Is it permissible, either legally or ethically, for the platform host to close down the blog and trash all of the blog’s history?

Whether it is or it isn’t, should it be?

Illiteracy and the modern student

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Via Instapundit: DISPATCHES FROM THE SOCIAL MEDIA VIRUS: Minds Destroyed By The Internet.

My students are unable to analyze, follow and understand written text. To be more specific, they are unable to decipher compound sentences, understand relationship between subordinate and main clauses. They can’t grasp the logical relationship between sentences, let alone paragraphs, which are totally opaque to them.

When I started to teach (only 2 years ago), I prepared material written in normal, rational, technical prose — for adults, or as I understood they would be. Immediately, it became apparent that there was zero comprehension. Well, thought I, let’s make it a bit simpler. So I reduced the paragraphs to bullet point lists.

Still nothing? Hmm.

I started to write step by step, basically cut-and-paste instructions, highlighted the important points, wrote in notes and cross references (like NOTE: you did this in step #2 please refer to #2). Abject failure.

So, especially in the exams, I started to write in answers in the follow up questions, like so: “If you correctly answered #1 as ABC what is the cause of …?”. Basically I give them the answers in followup questions, plus cut and paste documents. My exams are open book, open notes, Internet access.

95% of them fail.

It’s too bad that, despite winning that minor bit of unpleasantness called World War II, Churchill has become an unperson in the academy due to doubleplus ungood badthink on issues of colonialism. There’s much to be learned from how he crafted his speeches, as his latest successor at No. 10 Downing Street points out in this 2014 video:

It is possible women who live in capitalist economies really do prefer socialism

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Even more certain is that women who live in socialist economies prefer capitalism. It may take a year or two after the socialists have taken over, but eventually they figure it out, as do men as well. So let us begin with this: A MAJORITY of American women age 18-54 would prefer living in a socialist country to living in a capitalist country. That story was replied to here: 55% Of Women Prefer Socialism To Capitalism. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.

What is of particular interest is the list of attributes being sought in the socialist system these women are seeking to have introduced. The list is shown in descending order of approval, from 76% for the first through to 52% for the tenth.

  1. Universal healthcare (76 percent)
  2. Tuition-free education (72 percent)
  3. Living wage (68 percent)
  4. State-controlled economy (66 percent)
  5. State control and regulation of private property (61 percent)
  6. High taxes for the rich (60 percent)
  7. State-controlled media and communication (57 percent)
  8. Strong environmental regulations (56 percent)
  9. High public spending (55 percent)
  10. Government “democratizes” private businesses—that is, gives workers control over them—to the greatest extent possible (52 percent)

“State-controlled economy” pretty well defines socialism with 66 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 54 signing up for whatever it might mean in practice. These attitudes go very neatly with the 57% who seek “State-controlled media and communication”. With this as to provide the groundwork, let me continue with this: Can we risk nominating a man for president? Here is the point she is making:

Men have had their chance. Let us not risk four more years of this. After the past 230, we have been warned.

Yes, let women take over running our communities with no involvement of men where they can introduce exactly what they are looking for (see above). And following from that, let me continue with this: How Feminism Breeds Marital Resentment. I am sure it does with consequences all of their own. There is then this, where again both sides of the story are told. First this.

I’m sure this is wrong. Here is the other side.

Well, I’m not going to be around to know how it finally turns out when and if this has all played itself out. But I have to say, a complete take-over of our societies by Islam seems a more likely prospect than a society run by feminists.

Defining socialism in the modern world

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Here is the original story: Socialism is losing its stigma thanks to Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez as a MAJORITY of American women age 18-54 would prefer living in a socialist country to living in a capitalist country. That story was replied to here: 55% Of Women Prefer Socialism To Capitalism. Here’s Why They’re Wrong. But what is of particular interest is the list of attributes being sought in the socialist system these women are seeking to have introduced, in descending order of approval, from 76% for the first through to 52% for the tenth.

  1. Universal healthcare (76 percent)
  2. Tuition-free education (72 percent)
  3. Living wage (68 percent)
  4. State-controlled economy (66 percent)
  5. State control and regulation of private property (61 percent)
  6. High taxes for the rich (60 percent)
  7. State-controlled media and communication (57 percent)
  8. Strong environmental regulations (56 percent)
  9. High public spending (55 percent)
  10. Government “democratizes” private businesses—that is, gives workers control over them—to the greatest extent possible (52 percent)

“State-controlled economy” pretty well defines socialism with 66 percent signing up for whatever it might mean in practice. Goes very neatly with “State-controlled media and communication”. The full socialist box and dice.

If it’s not illegal to say it, it should be illegal to stop it from being said

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Comes with this: ‘The Five’ song about politics hits NUMBER ONE, so Twitter BANS IT!

And let me add this from Instapundit as well. It’s the comments thread that is of particular interest.

THE NEW RULES DON’T ONLY WORK ONE WAY: The woman who screamed ‘Nazi’ at a Trump supporter has been hounded out of a job. I don’t approve of people being hounded out of jobs for what they say, or even scream. But I didn’t make the new rules, and they won’t change back to something more civilized unless they’re uncomfortable for the left as well as the right.

This is the top comment.

Going by their fulminations on Twitter, it seems some right-wingers think this is about playing the left at its own game, as right-wingers have been the targets for myriad twitch-hunts in the past. But these people are just dressing up their own lack of principle and shrill, pearl-clutching authoritarianism as tactical nous.

The author of that article needs to read a treatise on the Prisoner’s Dilemma in game theory. Then perhaps he would see that tit-for-tat is necessary to deter bad actors.

Nobody likes outrage mobs. But the left pushed outrage mobs into the mainstream, and for a long time they had that particular tactic to themselves. They also pushed the concept so far that trivial things caused outrage, or even in some cases made up things.

Outrage became a weapon, a cudgel they gleefully wielded. I contend that it’s impossible to curb their use of that weapon unless they see it used against them.

Free speech, but on any platform like Twitter or Facebook, if it’s not illegal to say it, it should be illegal to prevent it from being said.

Just do it or you won’t do it at all

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Wall Street Journal op-ed:  The Dangers of Half Measures, by Sam Walker (author, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates the World’s Greatest Teams (2018)):

In the early summer of 1776, John Adams had grown profoundly exasperated.

King George had declared the 13 American colonies in open rebellion and sent troops to enforce his authority. A declaration of independence, and all-out war, seemed inevitable but still, holdouts in the Second Continental Congress kept clogging the docket with feckless half-measures and spineless appeasements.

“In politics, the middle way is none at all,” Adams fumed that March in a letter to an ally. “If we finally fail in this great and glorious contest, it will be by bewildering ourselves in groping for the middle way.”

One of the hallmarks of a great leader is the ability to convince others to do something difficult under maximum duress. For Adams, America’s loudest voice for independence, this test finally arrived on July 2, 1776, when the matter was put to a vote.

More than two centuries later, on March 29, 2019, British lawmakers convened in London to vote on a different kind of high-stakes divorce proposal: The United Kingdom’s long-planned departure from the European Union.

When Prime Minister Theresa May rose that day to support her Brexit deal, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d spent any time studying the events of 1776. By the time she’d finished talking, I was fairly certain she hadn’t.

These two “exits” were vastly different, of course, but there were a few key similarities. In both cases, the will of the people was clear enough. In 1776, most colonists supported independence, or soon would, while British voters had approved Brexit in a 2016 referendum.

Political maneuvering had delayed both measures for months, and time was running short. The colonists had a war to prepare for, while the U.K. faced the prospect of expulsion from the EU with no accommodations at all.

The key difference was the outcome: The colonies opted for independence without a single dissenting vote, but Parliament rejected Mrs. May’s last-ditch Brexit proposal by a 58-vote margin. John Adams, hailed as the “Atlas” of independence, went on to become president in 1796. On May 24, with no Brexit resolution in sight, Mrs. May announced her resignation.

If there’s a leadership lesson in these two tales, it’s this: The best way to persuade people to do something hard is to present them with the hardest possible choice.

Although Adams lobbied his colleagues tirelessly, he also set limits. He didn’t cut deals to secure votes or waste time negotiating with the king. He wanted delegates to cast their votes on one question only: whether the colonists, and really all people, had a fundamental right to be governed by consent.

By framing the vote as a matter of principle, Adams boxed “the cool crowd,” as he called them, into a difficult corner. They weren’t weighing another bundle of deal points and compromises, they were ruling on the nature of government itself. …

From the moment she became prime minister in 2016, Mrs. May’s primary job, as she saw it, was to honor the Brexit referendum while negotiating the best deal possible from the EU.

Three years later, on March 29—the very date Britain had originally set for Brexit—she presented Parliament with a proposal that was starkly different from the one Adams had offered. It was, quite literally, a half-measure.

To exit the EU, Parliament had to approve two things: a negotiated withdrawal agreement laying out the practical, immediate details of a Brexit, and a political declaration that would define the U.K.’s relationship with Europe in the future.

Rather than dialing up the pressure, Mrs. May tried to make the vote less intimidating. The more-contentious political declaration, which would ultimately determine the scope and severity of Brexit, was withheld, leaving lawmakers to rule solely on the basic nuts and bolts. In other words, she postponed the tricky bit. …

Like it or not, the British public chose a difficult, treacherous road. Brexit isn’t an incremental issue, it’s existential. In a case like that, concessions and middle measures only give ditherers more pegs to hang their pet concerns on. …

[T]he most fateful moments in the life of a nation, or a company, can’t be micromanaged. When a leader arrives at the edge of a cliff, the best approach is to distill the debate down to one stark, unequivocal choice.

Are we going to jump, or not?

From an old Australia but comfortable in the new

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I just thought that this was a story worth making sure everyone interested in this sort of thing would see. It is from cricket, and the opposite end of the Adam Goodes story told so well by Jupes. This is about Alan Davidson turning 90.

No other sport is like cricket, and certainly there is nothing like it I can think of from the North American sports I grew up on. Possibly my favourite quote is from hockey, from the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs when I was growing up, Conn Smythe: “if you can’t lick ’em in the alley, you can’t lick ’em on the ice.” Cricket is different, very different, and Alan Simpson Davidson showed it. A wonderful article, from which the following two stories are told in succession:

After play on the third evening of the last Test of the 1961 Ashes, Alan was having a drink with Ken Barrington, England’s ruggedly dependable No 5. What was Alan doing the following night, he asked. Would he come along to help at a junior presentation night? They agreed to rendezvous at 6.30pm.

It happened that Alan was bowling the last over of the day’s play to Barrington, stubbornly ensconced on 33. He finished the over with a fierce bouncer; rather than hook, Barrington stopped it with his chest.

As stumps was called, spectators saw Barrington gesturing towards Alan with his bat, seemingly in remonstrance. In fact, he was saying: “Remember! 6.30!”

Familiarity maintained behavioural bounds in play as well. During the Headingley Test, Barrington’s teammate Colin Cowdrey was 93 when he gloved a ball down the leg side but looked like getting away with it when the umpire’s finger stayed down.

Cowdrey’s reputation as a “walker”, even as a man of piety, was briefly jeopardised by the scent of a hard-won 100. From Alan’s wicketkeeper, Wally Grout, emanated a delicious sledge: “Are you reading the lesson this Sunday, Colin?” Cowdrey hastily tucked the bat beneath his arm and departed.

Another world, in relation to the times these stories are from and in comparison between cricket and every other sport ever known.

In defence of Professor Ricardo Duchesne

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The following has been take verbatim and in total from The Other McCain. It is titled, Sociology Professor Who Quoted ‘Red Pill’ Sites Forced Out of Canadian University.

In 2011, University of New Brunswick sociology professor Ricardo Duchesne published The Uniqueness of Western Civilization, a critique of multiculturalism. In 2017, Professor Duchesne published Faustian Man in a Multicultural Age:

At this pivotal moment in recent Western history, Richard Duchesne tackles what may be the most crucial question for people of European descent:

‘What makes us unique?’

Casting aside the dominant cultural Marxist narratives and dismissing the popular media attacks on concepts of ‘whiteness’, Duchesne draws on a range of historical examples, sources and philosophies to examine the origins of European man, his achievements, and the nature of the Faustian spirit that has driven his innovation and creativity.

Last month, Huffington Post published an article detailing how Professor Duchesne was “peddling white supremacist views while the university’s leadership is unable or unwilling to intervene.” As a result, Professor Duchesne has now been forced into retirement:

A University of New Brunswick professor accused of being a white supremacist and denounced by more than 100 colleagues for his views on immigration is taking early retirement, the university announced on Tuesday.

Prof. Ricardo Duchesne provided his notice “to focus on his own pursuits as an independent scholar,” vice-president Petra Hauf said in a statement.

“We respectfully accept his decision and thank him for his 24 years of service.” . . .

Duchesne, who teaches sociology at the Saint John campus, has appeared on far-right podcasts and YouTube channels. He has also written about what he calls the “relentless occupation of the West by hordes of Muslims and Africans,” and asserts that “only out of the coming chaos and violence will strong White men rise to resurrect the West.”

He says he’s looking forward to retiring at the end of the month and pursuing independent studies.

He plans to write about “why European civilization was far more creative than all the other civilizations combined” and “why all European-created nations are being forced to diversify themselves through mass immigration,” he said in an emailed statement.

He will also address “why the mainstream media never allows any critical thinking about the mandated ideology of diversity,” he said.

Googling some of the phrases attributed to Professor Duchesne, I found a March 2017 article, “There Is Nothing the Alt Right Can Do about the Effeminacy of White Men,” a historically informed analysis of cultural decadence. Professor Duchesne cites such sources as Plutarch, Polybius, Sallust and Livy on the similar trend of decadence in ancient Rome. Interestingly, Professor Duchesne also cites “red pill” sites Chateau Heartiste and Return of Kings. He does this to refute their claim that feminism is to blame for the decline of the West, concluding instead that this decline is a consequence of historical forces:

The expectation recently articulated in a Counter-Currents article that reading about Rome’s glories can teach current White men to regain their valor and heroism is pure wishful thinking. White men today will never build up their “resolve as great as that of the Romans” by reading about the Romans. The Romans built their character, before and during the time of Cato the Elder, by living at a point in the historical cycle when anarchy and savagery demanded hardness, by working extremely hard as farmers, by living in a very patriarchal culture that had harsh laws and expectations, and by undergoing intense military training and warfare. The Rome of Cato was a civilization at its peak; the West today is senile and childless, its families in decline, preoccupied with appearances, and overall too lazy and comfortable.

Decline is irreversible. The relentless occupation of the West by hordes of Muslims and Africans is an expression of White male decadence and effeminacy. Only out of the coming chaos and violence will strong White men rise to resurrect the West.

Well, these startling assertions would make an interesting topic of debate, if only Professor Duchesne’s critics were willing to debate him, but instead they have sought to silence him, to terminate his employment and ostracize him as persona non grata. How odd is it that disciples of Marx and Lenin — advocates of revolutionary socialism — are tolerated in academia, but a professor who makes reference to Plutarch and Livy is condemned as a Thought Criminal? The point is not whether one agrees with Professor Duchesne’s racial beliefs or his bleak assessment of future prospects, but instead whether these beliefs can be the subject of open discussion and debate. There is a totalitarian tendency in academia that now seeks to silence certain perspectives by labeling them “hate speech,” and it’s never the Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries who are silenced.

Free speech is an ethical obligation

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A interesting comment on an interview of Janet Fiamengo:

It appears that these students need an ethics course to explain the concept of rights and obligations. Free speech isn’t a right, it is an obligation, you fulfil your obligation by allowing your worst enemy to speak, they fulfil their obligation by ensuring that you can speak. If you only support those you agree with, and label everything you disagree with “hate speech” you have not fulfilled your obligation and have no right.

Here’s the interview, if you can stand the footage of the protestors she has had to deal with.