Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

Defining deviance up

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From Cut & Paste at The Oz: Once a jolly polly offered an apollygy, and other neologisms to celebrate Australia Day.

From the cool cats at Catallaxy Files during the past two years:

Abbariginal: Fair-skinned blonde claiming Aboriginality for money, money, money

Acadumbic: Professor who dumbs down students

Accusuals: Usual accusers

Alt-Racist: Reactionary throwback who believes man should be judged by content of character not colour of skin

ATMs: Australian Taxpaying Machines, ie taxpayers that pollies raid

Apollygy: Apology made by a hopeless PM about something they had no involvement in to seem more virtuous than the previous PM

Balance of poorer: Control votes in Senargy so prosperity never realised

Bolshie Ballet: Choreographed routine when crimes of socialism are brought up, such as “but that wasn’t real communism”, “but Scandinavia”. “but outside forces”

Bloodger: One who uses race to suck from the taxpayer’s teat

Canoebaya: Imaginary state in which all parties are in the same boat

Climatocracy: Upper echelons of climate science and activist fraternity, made wealthy as dauphins by immeasurable government largesse

Dimwitterati: Energy policy masters

Disasterati: Airhead commentariat that thrills about latest research proving catastrophic impact of climate change will end world as we know it

Dodgeridoo: Fake Aboriginal artefact

Foregasm: Wonderful feeling when Treasury forecasts balanced budget some time in next 20 years

Flannery: Unit of rain. “We’ve had over 75 ‘Flannerys’ in the past week”. one Flannery being 50 gigalitres

Fragilista: One who fights by whining for rights of snowflakes everywhere

Fauxphobia: 1. Pretending that sticking “phobia” on to a randomly chosen word is meaningful. 2. Fear of people who create meaningless words

Fleffers: Far-left activists who routinely stack audiences at ABC TV shows such as Q&A in order to whoop, cheer and vigorously applaud their ideology and its espousers

Fridgicide: Thanks to a US intellectual we know this, not Islamic, terrorism is the real threat to Western civilisation

Gendercide: Destruction of bio­logical gender as we know it

Gendercreep: Public education on just how many ways to have sex

Gorebulls: Utterances of Al Gore

Insulterati: (see Offendopotamus)

Intaxication: Wonderful feeling when government spends $ on you but you know a headache is coming

Islamofauxbia: Pretence that being wary of homicidal jihadists is somehow irrational

Leftwaffe: Mechanical formations that carpet-bomb social media with hashtags and believe they are superior to all others

Marxist Stream Media: … formerly known as mainstream media

Neo-Apartheid: Progressive, compassionate policy … (of) locking sections of community into non-Western culture (which) magically result in improved standards of living

Offendopotamus/offendopotami: Full-time offense taker

Phallinked: Person associated with “Safe Schools” child grooming

Pollicock: Political correctness

Pollycy: Policy for political purposes

Preposterist: One who expects others to believe their preposterous views

Rearviewergy: Rear view energy. Politicians in cahoots with crony capitalists who decide way forward is to fix sight in rear view mirror, ie windmills

Slacktivist: Someone who only ­attends demos after midday

Socialislam: Unofficial alliance ­between the Left and Islam

Social license: Inalienable right of those who don’t produce anything to hector and humbug those that do

Spitcoin: Currency, the more spitcoins one accumulates, the higher on the virtue ladder one is elevated and the more deplorables one can spit on

UNuchs: Fawning obsequiousness at international diplomatic gatherings

Woking Class: Demographic educated just sufficiently to assign relative degrees of morality to every member of the population except themselves

Oppression 101

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This is the start to an article titled, Critical Theory Quotes:

Critical theory is an ideology that divides the world into oppressed groups and oppressor groups and seeks to liberate the oppressed. It is currently the reigning theoretical paradigm in academic disciplines like gender studies, critical pedagogy, critical race theory, anthropology, and queer theory, and forms the ideological foundation for large segments of the secular social justice movement. In my speaking and writing, I’ve characterized critical theory according to several basic premises held by proponents of critical theory. Listed below are quotes which illustrates each of these basic premises.

Premise #1: Individual identity is inseparable from group identity as ‘oppressed’ or ‘oppressor’

Premise #2: Oppressor groups subjugate oppressed groups through the exercise of hegemonic power

Premise #3: Our fundamental moral duty is freeing groups from oppression

Premise #4: ‘Lived experience’ is more important than objective evidence in understanding oppression

Premise #5: Oppressor groups hide their oppression under the guise of objectivity

Premise #6: Individuals at the intersection of different oppressed groups experience oppression in a unique way

Just click on each link and you will get to the list of associated quotes. Here is the first quote from the first premise:

Premise #1: Individual identity is inseparable from group identity as ‘oppressed’ or ‘oppressor’

“My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor… I was taught [wrongly] to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will” – Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege and Male Privilege,” in Andersen and Collins, Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, p. 72

By the time you are through, you will see yourself as an oppressor of everyone else because you thoughtlessly just went ahead and lived your life without noticing all the harm you had caused to others. But they noticed, even though almost all their disadvantage might well have arisen because of who they were and not what you did.

The Covington Boys

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My interest in ideology goes back as far as I can remember. No one can live without ideology. It is a sorting mechanism that gives everyone a perspective on the events of life. In the West, there are at the present two broad ideologies that are at an almost 50-50 division, and its outcome will determine our future as a civilisation. There is on the one hand, the Judeo-Christian ethic that has evolved across the past two millennia and is itself built on the Greek and Roman ethos that goes back further still. It is the basis for our free market economic system and our democratic form of political organisation.

On the other side there is a Marxist-Progressive ideology that has as its base a absurd Utopian perspective that believes all of our social and economic problems would disappear if we rid ourselves of our Judeo-Christian ethic and replaced it with some form of dictatorship of the representatives of the proletariat. Name the problem – racism, inequality, poverty – they will fix it. Just put power into their hands and all will be done. The carriers of this ideological perspective have a track record so abysmal that you can barely believe anyone would admit to believing such vile nonsense, but that’s the role of ideology. Once you accept a perspective on the world, you are impervious to criticism.

Which brings me to The Covington Boys, an issue I thought of as so trivial that it was hardly worth a passing moment. Even if a bunch of high school kids had said some mean things to an Aboriginal American war veteran, it never really seemed much of anything. Yet it is turning out to be a true watershed moment. Here is the summary: YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE TO HOW THE MEDIA TRIED RUINING THE LIVES OF INNOCENT TEENAGERS.

  • The media smelled blood when a video seemingly showed a group of teenage boys bullying an older Native American protester.
  • Newer videos showed that the protester had actually approached the students, who were also receiving slurs shouted by a group of radical activists.
  • The media’s misleading reports happened at a time when the students were facing death threats.

Not stated above is that the boys were attending an anti-abortion rally in Washington while wearing MAGA hats. That they are only high school students meant nothing since any symbol will do for a Progressive-Marxist ideologue. If you would like a longer explanation, you can find it here: Lessons From an Online Lynching (Why #StandWithCovington Is Going Viral).

LET ME ADD THIS:

The Flight from Truth by Jean-François Revel

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A fine review of a book published in 1991 that is astonishing in its ability to see into the future and exactly captures the ideological world we are in right now. I will do my own review of it in the next week or so, but this will give you some sense of what there is. I will only say there is much much more and is the most insightful work on our present dilemma I have come across, but no one would write it today – well maybe Thomas Sowell – but I fear even more that no one would publish it. Here’s the review.

BOOK REVIEW: THE FLIGHT FROM TRUTH

by 

The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information by Jean-Francois Revel (New York: Random House, 1991); 408 pages; $25.When Jean-Francois Revel published How Democracies Perish in the early 1980s, he wanted to deliver a warning to the nations of the West that the Soviet Union was being allowed to win the Cold War. This threatened victory of communism, he argued, was not due to any inherent superiority in the Soviet model. Rather, it was coming about due to weakness in the democratic West. As a conservative, Mr. Revel was worried about a failure of will by the Western nations to stand up militarily to the perceived Soviet threat. But the core of his argument was an ideological one: the West had surrendered its vision and its understanding of why a free, open, market-oriented society was both moral and prosperous. Western intellectuals had accepted the premises of socialism and welfare statism. And as a consequence, the war of ideas and ideology around the world was being won by the Soviet Union.

Now, in the early 1990s, socialism in the form of the Soviet threat is gone. Communism has collapsed in the country in which it was first implemented because of its own internal weaknesses and contradictions. But the West, unfortunately, still suffers from the same ideological problems that Mr. Revel wrote about ten years ago. And this is the theme of his new book, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information.

Every one of the premises of the Left has been refuted by the failure of the socialist experiment. Socialism brought neither freedom, justice nor prosperity. Rather, socialism produced cruel despotisms, privilege and corruption, and economic distortion and poverty. But this is a reality that is too disturbing for many on the Left to accept. To admit the truth would shatter their beliefs, dreams and desires.

So, instead of accepting the truth, the Left has continued to construct deceptions and distortions of reality to protect and guard their most cherished premises. Mr. Revel explains that the heart of these deceptions has revolved around the attempt to prevent discussions of human-rights abuses and economic stagnation in socialist states and to limit all such discussions to “right-wing” dictatorships or Western nations. The standard reply to criticisms of socialism has not been a straight answer to meet the charges. Instead, the critic has been accused of ignoring equal or even greater abuses in capitalist countries and being so paranoid about communism that he is blind to the ever-threatening resurgence of fascism. Hence, the critic has been sidetracked into a debate over the possible revival of fascist dictatorships and away from the reality of the socialist experiment.

The second line of defense, Mr. Revel argues, is the use by the Left of the charge of racism. Insisting that there is no greater evil and danger in the world than racism and racial discrimination, the Left reduces all social and cultural tensions between people to one dimension: race. In discussions about the Third World, the only human-rights abuses of significance to the Left are those in South Africa under apartheid — and for the Left, apartheid is nothing more than a degenerate form of capitalism. That millions have died from socialist-produced famines in black-ruled African countries — that Marxist regimes in black Africa have tortured and murdered tens of thousands of their own people — does not even go down an Orwellian memory-hole; for to be erased from the record would imply that these events in Africa were reported in the press, when, in fact, they occurred in an informational void, ignored by most of the press in the West.

When the Left has been challenged about socialist tyranny in Africa, the response has often been that freedom without development is meaningless. As @&. Revel says, “I was under the impression that freedom was good in itself, independent of the standard of living of the population…. In reality, if democracy without development was meaningless, then neither the French or the American revolution nor the British reform movement should have been undertaken.” And he asks, “[Wlho would be qualified to fix the degree of development above which a democracy ceases to be ‘nothing’ and becomes ‘something’?”

All of dim tendencies in evading the truth of the socialist experience and fabricating smoke screens in reality’s place, Mr. Revel argues, have been bolstered by a journalistic community that views itself as an advocate of “good causes,” rather than as reporters of events; by an academic community that views its task as one to remold the minds of the youth in their charge; by an intellectual community that has nothing but ridicule and hate for their own society. The perspective from which most of the members of these communities approach their duties is moderate to extreme Leftism.

And even now in a post-communist era, the lies and flights from truth will continue to persist. Why? Because what many of these people really want is not so much the success of socialism as the destruction of capitalism. Their hatred, fear and contempt of human freedom and the market economy will survive the demise of a thousand socialist experiments. And that is the real face of the enemy.

Let me link to one other that seem to make the point, and it is relatively recent as well, from 2011: Managed truth: The great danger to our republic which begins with a very astute comment:

French social critic Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850) once said, “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.”

He also discusses the arrival of Keynesian economics as part of this process.

In his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes advocated the planning of a nation’s economic life, political supervision of private industry, and manipulation of the currency, that is, a massive increase in the size and scope of government. The first enthusiastic review of Keynes’ General Theory by a professional economist was by G. D. H. Cole, an avowed Marxist and a founding member of the Fabian Society. Two of the strongest proponents in America were government officials in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White, both proven communists. Keynes himself was quoted as saying, “The Republic of my imagination lies on the extreme left of celestial space.”[24] Despite this, Keynesian economics dominated the American economy until the election of Ronald Reagan, after which it was declared dead. Unfortunately, the corpse continues to convulse and has now arisen as a zombie, more difficult to kill than ever.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect and the ignorance of experts

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Sent to me from an old friend. That I can still have friends who find this video appealing says more about them than about myself. The intent is to prove what a self-confident dunce the American president is. For myself, listening to the text leaves me colder than cold. Not to distinguish between immigrants and illegal immigrants is one of those slither-past issues that the video makes hay with. Or to think the issue over the EPA is anything other than the utter idiocy of global warming, and even quotes the 97% statistic! Having been put together in 2017, it was made before the overwhelming evidence that the American economy is booming and manufacturing jobs are returning, so on yet another score it misses the point. And what’s the latest opinion on bringing home troops from Syria? My friend writes in his accompanying email:

‘The tag line is “The enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge”‘

which is the essence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, adding:

‘which may have direct implications for your continuing battles with orthodox academia.’

And so it might. But if I find any particular statement fits my mood in dealing with economic theory, it is from Richard Feynman:

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

Which applies as much to modern macro as it does to the modern Administrative State. As for the illusion of knowledge, what I find more incredible is the absence of knowledge. The media’s main role has been to ensure that only one side of the case is ever freely available. If news reporting were ever to become unbiased and honest – which it won’t – the parties of the left would never win another election until they too became parties of the right.

After 1400 years what will change and why would it?

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Top Islamic authority lists twenty evil qualities the Qur’an attributes to Jews. This is the list.

The following article, with its numbered list of twenty Qur’an-sourced statements of anti-Semitism, used to be posted at IslamOnline.net, but the scandal of it apparently made them think it prudent to take it down. It can now be found at numerous sites on the web by pasting some of the text into Google. Sheikh ‘Atiyyah Saqr (died 2006), the Head of the Fatwa Committee at Al-Azhar University, the chief center of Islamic and Arabic learning in the world, wrote it:

“The Qur’an has specified a considerable deal of its verses to talking about Jews, their personal qualities and characteristics. The Qur’anic description of Jews is quite impartial; praising them in some occasions where they deserve praise and condemning them in other occasions where they practice blameworthy acts. Yet, the latter occasions outnumbered the former, due to their bad qualities and the heinous acts they used to commit.

The Qur’an praises them on the verse that reads: “ And verily We gave the Children of Israel the Scripture and the Command and the Prophethood, and provided them with good things and favored them above (all) peoples.” i.e. the peoples of their time. (Qur’an 45:16)

Among the bad qualities they were characterized with are the following:

1. They used to fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah. Allah Almighty says: “ That is because they say: We have no duty to the Gentiles. They speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly.” (Qur’an 3:75) Also: “The Jews say: Allah’s hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so. Nay, but both His hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will.” (Qur’an 5:64)

In another verse Almighty Allah says: “Verily Allah heard the saying of those who said, (when asked for contributions to the war): “Allah, forsooth, is poor, and we are rich! We shall record their saying with their slaying of the Prophets wrongfully and We shall say: Taste ye the punishment of burning!” (Qur’an 3:181)

2. They love to listen to lies.Concerning this Allah says: “and of the Jews: listeners for the sake of falsehood, listeners on behalf of other folk” (Qur’an 5:41)

3. Disobeying Almighty Allah and never observing His commands. Allah says: “And because of their breaking their covenant, We have cursed them and made hard their hearts.” (Qur’an 5:13)

4. Disputing and quarreling. This is clear in the verse that reads: “Their Prophet said unto them: Lo! Allah hath raised up Saul to be a king for you. They said: How can he have kingdom over us when we are more deserving of the kingdom than he is, since he hath not been given wealth enough?” (Qur’an 2:247)

5. Hiding the truth and standing for misleading. This can be understood from the verse that reads: “…distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture.” (Qur’an 3:78)

6. Staging rebellion against the Prophets and rejecting their guidance. This is clear in the verse: “And when ye said: O Moses! We will not believe in thee till we see Allah plainly.” (Qur’an 2:55)

7. Hypocrisy. In a verse, we read: “And when they fall in with those who believe, they say: We believe; but when they go apart to their devils they declare: Lo! we are with you; verily we did but mock.” (Qur’an 2:14) In another verse, we read: “Enjoin ye righteousness upon mankind while ye yourselves forget (to practice it)? And ye are readers of the Scripture! Have ye then no sense?” (Qur’an 2:44)

8. Giving preference to their own interests over the rulings of religion and the dictates of truth. Allah says: “…when there cometh unto you a messenger (from Allah) with that which ye yourselves desire not, ye grow arrogant, and some ye disbelieve and some ye slay?”(Qur’an 2:87)

9. Wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them. This is clear in the verse that reads: “Many of the People of the Scripture long to make you disbelievers after your belief, through envy on their own account, after the truth hath become manifest unto them.” (Qur’an 2:109)

10. They feel pain to see others in happiness and are gleeful when others are afflicted with a calamity.This is clear in the verse that reads: “If a lucky chance befall you, it is evil unto them, and if disaster strike you they rejoice thereat.” (Qur’an 3:120)

11. They are known of their arrogance and haughtiness. They claimed to be the sons and of Allah and His beloved ones. Allah tells us about this in the verse that reads: “The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones.” (Qur’an 5:18)

12. Utilitarianism and opportunism are among their innate traits. This is clear in the verse that reads: “And of their taking usury when they were forbidden it, and of their devouring people’s wealth by false pretenses.” (Qur’an 4:161)

13. Their impoliteness and indecent way of speech is beyond description.Referring to this, the Qur’anic verse reads: “Some of those who are Jews change words from their context and say: “We hear and disobey; hear thou as one who heareth not” and “Listen to us!” distorting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they had said: “We hear and we obey; hear thou, and look at us” it had been better for them, and more upright. But Allah hath cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, save a few.” (Qur’an 4:46)

14. It is easy for them to slay people and kill innocents. Nothing in the world is dear to their hearts than shedding blood and murdering human beings. They never give up this trait even with the Messengers and the Prophets. Allah says: “…and slew the prophets wrongfully.” (Qur’an 2:61)

15. They are merciless and heartless. In this meaning, the Qur’anic verse explains: “Then, even after that, your hearts were hardened and became as rocks, or worse than rocks, for hardness.” (Qur’an 2:74)

16. They never keep their promises or fulfill their words. Almighty Allah says: “Is it ever so that when ye make a covenant a party of you set it aside? The truth is, most of them believe not.” (Qur’an 2:100)

17. They rush hurriedly to sins and compete in transgression. Allah says: “They restrained not one another from the wickedness they did. Verily evil was that they used to do!” (Qur’an 5:79)

18. Cowardice and their love for this worldly life are their undisputable traits. To this, the Qur’an refers when saying: “Ye are more awful as a fear in their bosoms than Allah. That is because they are a folk who understand not. They will not fight against you in a body save in fortified villages or from behind walls. Their adversity among themselves is very great. Ye think of them as a whole whereas their hearts are divers.” (Qur’an 59:13 and Qur’an 59:14). Allah Almighty also says: “And thou wilt find them greediest of mankind for life and (greedier) than the idolaters.” (Qur’an 2:96)

19. Miserliness runs deep in their hearts. Describing this, the Qur’an states: “Or have they even a share in the Sovereignty? Then in that case, they would not give mankind even the speck on a date stone.” (Qur’an 4:53)

20. Distorting Divine Revelation and Allah’s Sacred Books. Allah says in this regard: “Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands anthem say, “This is from Allah,” that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe unto them for that their hands have written, and woe unto them for that they earn thereby.” (Qur’an 2:79)

After this clear explanation, we would like to note that these are but some of the most famous traits of the Jews as described in the Qur’an. They have revolted against the Divine ordinances, distorted what has been revealed to them and invented new teachings which, they claimed, were much more better than what has been recorded in the Torah. It was for these traits that they found no warm reception in all countries where they tried to reside. Rather, they would either be driven out or live in isolation. It was Almighty Allah who placed on them His Wrath and made them den of humiliation due to their transgression. Almighty Allah told us that He’d send to them people who’d pour on them rain of severe punishment that would last till the Day of Resurrection. All this gives us glad tidings of the coming victory of Muslims over them once Muslims stick to strong faith and belief in Allah and adopt the modern means of technology.”

Also at the link are “LINKS TO CORE ISLAMIC TEXTS AND OTHER DATA” that are equally enlightening.

The true nature of things likes to conceal itself

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The proper title of this article is, In defence of Donald Trump, a man of character among a pack of dogs. This is how it ends with much of good sense before the end is reached.

I don’t know anyone who voted for Donald Trump, or who later came to support him, because he thought the president was a candidate for sainthood.

On the contrary, people supported him, first, because of what he promised to do and, second, because of what, over the past two years, he has accomplished. These accomplishments, from rolling back the regulatory state and scores of conservative judicial appointments, from moving our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem to resuscitating our military, working to end Obamacare, and fighting to keep our borders secure, are not morally neutral data points. They are evidences of a political vision and of promises made and kept. They are, in short, evidences of what sort of character Donald Trump is.

Add them up and I think they go a long way towards a definition of good character that Donald Trump can clear.

Voltaire, writing against Rousseau and his self-intoxicated paeans to “virtue,” occupied a similar semantic neighborhood: “What is virtue, my friend?” Voltaire asked. “It is to do good: let us do it, and that’s enough. We won’t look into your motives.”

Character is not destiny. The future is not fixed. We have a right to hope.

And in this spirit, the best to you all for the New Year.