Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

“We are responsible for our own destruction”

Posted on by
Reply

Let us begin with this passage from an op ed in The Australian today by Tim Wilson on 18C requires non-racial remit without curbs on free speech. There we find:

No other area of federal law seeks to make public acts unlawful simply for offending, insulting or humiliating someone.

In its present form 18C has more in common with anti-blasphemy laws in theocracies than it does with other federal laws.

To put into context just how bad 18C is, under federal law you can urge violence against groups of people with a disability, gays or women but you can’t offend people on the basis of their race.

In its present form 18C is not a protection of people’s human rights on the basis of race; it grants a special privilege that isn’t afforded to others in society.

Absolutely. You cannot rule out public debate because someone might find themselves insulted by what someone else is saying. Take for instance this from the letters page in The Oz today, just opposite Tim’s column. Can it make any sense to prosecute any of the letter writers below?

Islam is winning the world war and will be victorious, culminating in the destruction of Western civilisation and democracy.

The writing is on the wall, on the footpath and on the road, written in blood because Western leaders and politicians, mainstream media and academics appeases the enemy by refusing to name Islam for what it is.

Islam is a religion invented to give divine sanction to Arabic military expansion through a supremacist, totalitarian ideology dominated by intimidation, fear, ignorance and irrationality. It has violence at its core.

It has no place in an ordered, rational society. But it’s too late now. We are responsible for our own destruction.

PT, Cornelian Bay, Tas

The only good that can come from the shocking carnage in Berlin is a New Year’s resolution from the Germans to oust Angela Merkel from office. As Tony Abbott said in his recent Prague address, effective border protection is not for the squeamish, but it is absolutely necessary to save lives and to preserve nations.

MM, Singleton, NSW

Germany has wonderful Christmas markets and such a fantastic atmosphere but now this latest atrocity from what we are always told are peace-loving Muslims. Germany welcomed them in with open arms. What a way to repay the kindness.

The Russian ambassador murdered, again by a peace-loving Muslim in Turkey.

No wonder Pauline Hanson is doing well as she does at least speak the truth. We deplorables are not that stupid.

MS, Halls Head, WA

A Russian diplomat is assassinated by a man “using Arabic phrases”.

Yet Angela Merkel, Barack Obama and Malcolm Turnbull still sit inert and in bemusement at why the likes of Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson are being elected. Society clearly wants someone with the courage and mettle to call out and challenge intolerant religious ideology.

AM, Port Melbourne, Vic

It is getting harder to say certain things, but unless the aim is to hasten the destruction of our way of life, all of this has to be open for debate, irrespective of the personal feelings of those who might merely pretend to be offended to prevent others from saying what they think.

Experts without expertise

Posted on by
Reply

Being educated and smart is not the same as being clued in and having common sense. From The Intellectual Yet Idiot. I have bolded the bit that matters most to me. Basically, almost every area of public life is managed by people who have only a learned experience, not an actual experience of the issues they are dealing with. They have studied the subject, but have never actually plied their trade in the area.

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons. . . .

The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.

Essentially, our societies have been managed by a clerisy of the ignorant and stupid. With Trump, it may be about to change, but they will not give up without a fight.

Investigating political madness

Posted on by
Reply

These are two sets of comments on the post at Instapundit on Maybe Their Mental Health Wasn’t That Good Before the Election, previously discussed here. The first set are actually four different comments made by “Gagdad Bob” which I have strung together.

The deeper structure of human nature hasn’t changed since the arrival of liberalism. Liberalism is a new way to be mentally ill, but not the illness as such. It is similar to how fear of aliens is a way to be paranoid. Paranoia has always existed, but the objects of paranoia change.

Being that I am a clinical psychologist who has seen countless liberals, I would say the majority have been just ignorant or of low intelligence. No need to reach for a complex explanation. The more activist kind — the true believers — are another story. For them, liberalism can be anything from a substitute religion to a massive defense mechanism to covert sociopathy. There’s no one-size-fits-all explanation.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they think they are doing good, but in fact are sadists. It reminds me of why Homer Simpson wanted to become a police officer: “because it combines my desire to help people with my desire to hurt them.”

If liberalism didn’t exist, the unconscious would invent it as an ideal way to embody and express so much pain and conflict. In so many ways it’s the perfect vehicle for a host of irrational psychological, spiritual, and existential issues, which is why it is so difficult to eradicate. It is immune to reason, the same way an illness is. (And yes, it is important to distinguish between the cynics at the top, the true believers in between, and the passive & manipulated masses below.)

This then is a comment put up by AndrewZ along similar lines.

Identity politics creates mental illness because it makes people paranoid. It teaches them to see other people not as individuals but as representatives of a category. The categories are organised into an elaborate hierarchy of victimhood and oppression and all social interactions are treated as an expression of the power relationships between the groups.

A person who has internalised this way of thinking will start to see everyone who belongs to one of the designated oppressor groups as a threat and will feel acutely uncomfortable in their presence. They will feel that they are surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to do something terrible to them. Since they have been trained to interpret everything they see and hear in terms of power relationships they will see threatening messages everywhere, and their heightened self-consciousness will make it seem as though it’s all aimed at them personally.

The SJWs are so full of rage and so ready to lash out because they really do think that they are under constant attack. They need to scream and shout to relieve the unbearable psychological pressure of living in a state of permanent siege. That’s also why many leftist writers have such a breathless, frantic style full of hyperbole and wild accusations. It’s the desperate strung-out voice of the paranoiac, surrounded by phantom menaces that nobody else can see.

To somebody in that state of mind, it would be impossible to conceive of a rich white male Republican – the apex predator of oppression – wanting to do anything other than establish a brutal tyranny. So naturally they go into a state of panic when such a person is elected President.

For me, it is all just a phenomenon which is beyond my understanding. That it is real and out there, of this I have no doubt. But it does make things much more difficult, and to me, these people really do seem deranged.

Discrediting the very notion of human rights

Posted on by
Reply

The oddest part about many of the decisions Gillian Triggs has made is that she has done more to discredit the notion of human rights abuse than any actual instance uncovered since she came to head the AHRC. Is there more to this latest instance or is it as bizarre as it sounds:

A TOP tech firm has been told to cough up $76,639 in compo to a drug dealer, after besieged human rights boss Gillian Triggs ruled he had been unfairly fired over his criminal record.

The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wants Data#3 to pay the sacked IT consultant $71,639 in lost earnings plus $5000 in compo for “hurt, humiliation and distress as a result of being discriminated against’’.

Ms Triggs — whose politically-correct decisions have triggered calls for her resignation as AHRC president — gave the eyebrow-raising edict that obtaining a security clearance or passing a police check were not “inherent requirements’’ of the IT job.

But Data#3, which does sensitive work for government agencies, told the AHRC that the contractor’s employment was “untenable’’ because all employees “must have and exhibit the highest ethical standards’’. . .

The sacked worker, known as Mr AW, was hired on a $185,000 salary package as a Microsoft “solution specialist’’ late in 2013.

He was fired a few weeks later after Data#3 discovered his criminal conviction on six counts of selling ecstasy in New Zealand in 2011.

In what sense is it dealing with “human rights” abuse to punish firms to the tune of thousands of dollars for making a judgement call about whether they can trust an individual who has withheld information about their prior criminal conviction? Is there some kind of law she is following, or does she just make it up as she goes along?

How fleeting is fame

Posted on by
Reply

jfk

I just went down to pick up some exams from admin and when I went to sign for them I had to ask the date, which is apparently November 22. So I said, oh look, it’s the anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. And from the blank look, I did have to ask, do you know who Kennedy was, John F. Kennedy, you know, the former president of the United States? Did not know, had never heard of him, his name did not even ring the most distant bell.

For those who do not know since she would hardly be unique: November 22, 1963: Death of the President. It truly was a day that changed the world.

The revolt of the dispossessed

Posted on by
Reply

I have been re-reading Christopher Lasch’s brilliant The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy which was published more than a decade ago. It’s about the we-know-what’s-best-for-you types who have risen to the top of power structures across the world. A brief but inadequate summary but you’ll get the point:

Controversy has raged around Lasch’s targeted attack on the elites, their loss of moral values, and their abandonment of the middle class and poor, for he sets up the media and educational institutions as a large source of the problem. In this spirited work, Lasch calls out for a return to community, schools that teach history not self-esteem, and a return to morality and even the teachings of religion. He does this in a nonpartisan manner, looking to the lessons of American history, and castigating those in power for the ever-widening gap between the economic classes, which has created a crisis in American society. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy is riveting social commentary.

If you want to understand the attractions of Donald Trump, there is no better place I can think to look. And if you want an even better idea what it’s all about, you should read The economic losers are in revolt against the elites by Martin Wolf [perfect name] in The Financial Times.

Losers have votes, too. That is what democracy means — and rightly so. If they feel sufficiently cheated and humiliated, they will vote for Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican party’s presidential nomination in the US, Marine Le Pen of the National Front in France or Nigel Farage of the UK Independence party. . . .

It is not hard to see why ordinary people, notably native-born men, are alienated. They are losers, at least relatively; they do not share equally in the gains. They feel used and abused. After the financial crisis and slow recovery in standards of living, they see elites as incompetent and predatory. The surprise is not that many are angry but that so many are not.

Branko Milanovic, formerly of the World Bank, has shown that only two parts of the global income distribution enjoyed virtually no gains in real incomes between 1988 and 2008: the poorest five percentiles and those between the 75th and the 90th percentile. The latter includes the bulk of the population of high-income countries.

The Clinton Foundation is the perfect example of how our elites operate. They shaft you and steal your money, and most importantly, they use government as their major tool to syphon the wealth of the hard-working majority to themselves and their friends.

Diana West on Cultural Marxism: Political Correctness

Posted on by
Reply

This is about freedom of speech, both in content and in actual circumstance.

Picked up at Diana West’s website, The Death of the Grown-Up. In this case, she is talking about the roots of a worldwide problem where the left believes it has the right and the duty to silence anyone with a different point of view. It goes back a long way. A very engaging presentation as well.

Piketty in Melbourne

Posted on by
Reply

I went to see Thomas Piketty tonight, author of the socialist tract of our time, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The left has run out of all of the standard criticisms of capitalism, that it will crush the working class, savage our living standards, prevent production for need rather than profit, and et cetera ad infinitum. That we live in a world of material abundance hasn’t tipped the balance away from the fifty per cent of every society who are frustrated because others do better than they do and want redress. Hence the stellar issue of our time, the demand for equality. It was a short Q&A after with only three questions that ended up being asked, and so I was left with the microphone in my hand but no chance to ask what I had in mind. This was my question:

We are meeting in the Melbourne Town Hall, built when Australia was the richest country in the world, and Melbourne was the richest city in the world’s richest country.

Back then, no one had a car, a computer, a radio or TV. Few had indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water and electric lights. No one flew to London, went to the movies or surfed the net.

What possible difference could it make to anyone whether income distribution in some measure that is invisible to everyone without a dataset and a computer happens to be more skewed in one direction today than it was at some moment in the past?

I have asked a similar question before to someone at an Economics Society meeting in Melbourne, and the chap point blank refused to answer my question because, he said, it didn’t make sense to him.

But the fact is that the poor will always be with us and so will the rich. We have the richest poor people who have ever lived, and there is no reason to think that if we manage our affairs properly, that the standard of living of the poorest amongst us in fifty years will have an income level that is only attainable by the top ten percent of our population today.

So the sad thing is that the one thing we have discovered by increasing wealth and raising living standards to levels inconceivable a century ago has hardly affected the average level of contentment. As for distribution of wealth, the person who did ask the third question instead of me went on a long rant against the capitalist system. My expectation was that Piketty would at least defang to some extent the premise of his question, but he didn’t. So he really is nothing other than a soap box rabble rouser with no other genuine intent other than to stir up as much trouble as he can.

“There is no third option, there is no compromise, there is no sitting out the election”

Posted on by
Reply

Speaking of political idiots, this has just come my way which might help some see things more clearly: Conservative leaders step up for Trump, warn of a “Clinton Progressive Police State”. If the title doesn’t make you see the point, perhaps the introduction to the publication will:

Longtime conservative maven Richard Viguerie has produced an instant publication for these final, frantic days before the election, consisting of essays penned by a group of 18 conservative leaders who include Brent Bozell, Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell Jr., Craig Shirley, Joseph Farah, David Keene and James Dobson.

Mr. Viguerie says the compilation is meant to “attack the idea that not voting for Donald Trump somehow advances conservative principles.” The 25-page booklet is titled “Hail Hillary: Is a Clinton-Progressive Police State in America’s Future?”

Interesting. Some in GOP circles seem to suggest there’s virtue in shunning Mr. Trump.

“Hail Hillary is a cannonball through the doors of the ivory towers of those conservative who continue to obdurately claim that a Hillary Clinton presidency might not be that bad, that the country can recover after four or eight years, and that her policies won’t be aimed at marginalizing, if not outlawing, the conservative worldview,” says Mr. Viguerie.

“This is now a binary choice: Donald Trump and Mike Pence vs. Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. In this battle there is only the victory or defeat of constitutional liberty and the rule of law. In this battle there is no third option, there is no compromise, there is no sitting out the election. I’m all in for Trump and Pence.”

Anyone who cannot see the difference a Trump administration would make in comparison with an administration led by Hillary is so out of it politically that there is never any further reason to pay attention to a thing they say about the great issues of our time.

Meanwhile if LIQ wants to make out the case for four years of Hillary, he is more than welcome to try. Not some link to someone else, but in his own words. As for the case against in my previous post, he ought to have gone to my link to the post by Publius Decius Mus where it is all spelt out. If LIQ can provide an answer to PDM based on conservative principles, international fame awaits.