Freedom of expression and the left
From a coment by “Eris Guy”:
The Left/Communist/Democrats have been calling Republicans “Nazis” since Wendell Willkie. (Can you imagine claiming — or worse believing — Willkie is a Nazi.) It’s a slow, steady drip of hate until the water becomes a flood. That flood is not yet here, but it will be — when the state and mobs unite to eliminate their opponents.
The Enlightenment is based on limiting power: no consensus in science that can silence dissenters; no election in which the losers are ruined or killed. Socialism renounces both of those.
There was both Nazi and Communist “science” (and Marxism itself is “scientific socialism,” and, of course, socialists (in too many countries to list here) mass murdered their opponents.
The Enlightenment is dying. People tire of its ideas. Its adherents and advocates are corrupted, shadows who don’t believe their own rhetoric.
And so a democracy and republic gives way to a Democratic Republic.
People not only tire of the Enlightenment – there are reasons they actively dislike it, particularly the left. After all, it makes indoctrination difficult because it means you have to let the opposition speak and fight it in the realm of ideas as well as defending the consequences of your policies. Therefore it’s something the left realizes constitutes a threat. But it also constitutes an opportunity for leftists, because until the left actually obtains power, supporting the free expression of ideas ensures that the left will have the ability to express its own ideas while still a relatively powerless minority. Then, when the left has achieved power and control, it can “move beyond” the free expression of ideas and quash those of its opponents.
The left is patient. I have believed for many years that the turning point was the takeover of education by the left, which has been going on for at least a century (see this, for example). In that post, I featured the following quote from a book called Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher, by Peter J. Stanlis. The events described occurred about a hundred years ago:
To [Robert] Frost, progressive education [Dewey] was a closed system that would “compel liberality.” Like Rousseau, it would force students to be free, not merely from self-discipline, but from social traditions and normative beliefs…To Frost, the progressive theory of the child-centered school was false…
To Frost, Meiklehohn’s [head of Amherst, where Frost was teaching] conception of academic freedom was merely a collegiate adaptation of Dewey’s progressive education in the form of doctrinaire compulsory liberalism, centered in social problems rather than in psychology. Meiklehohn’s educational reforms were in the spirit of what Frost called “the guild of social planners,” men who assumed that abstract reasoning and logic were sufficient to solve the world’s great perennial problems. After meeting with some of Meiklejohn’s young faculty appointees, Dwight Morrow, an Amherst trustee, described them to a friend as “bumptious young men…who insisted that nobody thought or studied at Amherst until they came.”…
“They fancied themselves thinkers. At Amherst you thought, while at other colleges you merely learned… I found that by thinking they meant stocking up with radical ideas, by learning they meant stocking up with conservative ideas…”
So even before the 1960s this approach had a long tradition, which was stepped up by the decision of radical leftists such as Bill Ayers to become influential educators for the express purpose of carrying on the revolution in a gradual Gramscian and Fabian manner.
Now conservative thought is fast becoming banned, not just in academia but also in the media and the workplace and even in society as a whole. Gulags apparently need not be actual; they can be virtual and economic – for our own good, as it were, to protect us against evildoers, which includes dissenters from the leftist party line.
Leftists have been obsessed with what they call McCarthyism for many decades through endless plays, films, books, etc. but, in all likelihood, what is soon to come under a Harris/Biden administration (beholden to donors in Big Media and Big Tech, as well as in full ideological alignment) will make the excesses of the senator from WI (who, despite his personal failings, was far more correct than wrong) seem innocent and insignificant in comparison. History has proven, time and again, that once leftists have attained full hegemony through unchecked power, they seldom, if ever. relinquish control willingly or by means of the democratic process.
“People tire of (Enlightenment ideas)
A group of Duke Law students, demanding the disinvitation of visiting speaker, used the phrase ‘we are tired.’ Jonathan Turley remarked:
“Those three words sum up a great deal of the anti-free speech movement growing on our campuses. Students and faculty have grown tired of free speech. Opposing views are now treated as threats and intolerable for students.”
Reading the above, I was immediately reminded of a remark that a young woman made (to writer Ida Wylie) during the Nazi era:
“We Germans are so happy. We are free from freedom”
Possible causes of this phenomenon discussed here: Is Free Speech Too Exhausting?
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64391.html
I saw this comment on an article by never Trumper David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy trying to explain the appeal of Trump supporters. His analysis is flawed, IMO, but it was this comment that caught my attention. We recently heard a talking head on CNN saying something like this.
But this comment is so straightforward, I take this person at his word. This isn’t satire.
LR Heckerman
“It is clear from the article that Trumpers suffer from a collective wrong think. Since there are so many of them, they present a real threat to society and the rule of law. If we control them with an iron boot, it will be too bloody, so I suggest the humane and compassionate option and that would be a reeducation or deprogramming once they are Identified. If they are homeschoolers, their children are most likely not aware of their biases and wrong think. The parents of those children must be compelled to stop homeschooling and we need to take a serious look at the type of church they attend and provide alternatives.
Until the threat is gone, we need to curtail their rights initially but temporarily until they have responded positively to treatment.”
I wonder what percentage of the left shares this sentiment? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a majority.
I wonder what percentage of garden variety liberals might think this a might too extreme, but agree something needs to be done about the problem.
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/14/on-the-appeal-of-trump-to-trump-ffans/?fbclid=IwAR0Z5XNEa8C8fkxM5q8hIRfBYbKOVhIE2gJyKuW8qqrgydt5l8O47qTEzAM#comment-8704877
Caroline Glick has a new essay on how wrong and horrible it was for Joe Biden to refer to Senators Hawley and Cruz as the new Goebbels for promoting the Big Lie. That is, the fact that even though there is substantial and credible doubt about the election results in 8 states were aren’t allowed to debate it or even look into it.
The Left’s failure to believe in the Enlightenment and the core ideas of our Founding is a giant part of the problem today. One of the ideas of the Enlightenment being that individuals have worth and God-given rights. The Left, on the other hand, is all wound up in identity politics.
Last night on Tucker there was a clip where some Dem asserted that 1-6 was all about white supremacy and how the people there were upset because POC were now in charge. I laughed. That wasn’t why they were there. They were there because the election was stolen and there has been no investigation into it. That’s where the judiciary failed us so badly.
I’ve asserted that the Dems have the burden of proof to prove that the election was fair. On Twitter, I get attacked because that’s not the normal burden of proof and as a lawyer, I should know better. I do and that’s why I propose shifting the burden of proof.
I also propose some type of 9/11 Commission on the 2020 election, but that will never happen. The Dems will steal every election they want to for the rest of my life. My only hope is that the Dems screwup so badly in some horrible crisis that they get kicked out. Doubtful.
And on the Free Speech front, on Twitter I took a Creighton Law prof to task for imprecision in her language in referring to 1-6 as a “coup.” The Dean weighed in against me. They called my tweets ad hominem attacks; I called it lawyer discourse along the lines of the Socratic method.
I’m sure if the current Creighton Law faculty had their way, they’d revoke my degree. Hard to believe how politicized and liberal the faculty is. Creighton has both a Director of Diversity and Sustainability. Anti-racism is taught via the book by Ibrahim X. Kindi. The Dean’s wife told me to read “White Fragility.”
This is all very disturbing. We conservatives have nothing in common with these libs.
Had a hippie looking guy respond to a comment I made on a local news article that it would “ take years to deprogram the trumpsters”. ( Rough paraphrase.) I responded with a question about the Soviet Gulags and the current camps the ChiComs have. Asking him if that was what he meant. Never heard back. I think they should be called on it and shamefully compared to their comrades.
I don’t know about being tired, but I can tell you that if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, I don’t think I would be as depressed today as I am now. Trump’s presidency and the reaction to it exposed so much.
Youtube just took down the vid of Utah antifa Sullivan that was arrested.
Big tech has gone the way of the Model T Ford … you can have any color you want as long as it’s BLACK!
but I can tell you that if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, I don’t think I would be as depressed today as I am now. Trump’s presidency and the reaction to it exposed so much
Good point. It would be easier to lower expectations, than to ride this erratic wave. All we have to do is kneel, which explains a lot about never again, and again, and again, and the conservative Declaration of Independence.
Big tech has gone the way of the Model T Ford … you can have any color you want as long as it’s BLACK!
For the next hour sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer Limits.
“You’re born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you’re up in the rarefied atmosphere and you’ve forgotten what shit even looks like.” – Sir Michael Gambon
“Gulags apparently need not be actual; they can be virtual and economic.”
Well, in the beginning that is so.
But the left is never satisfied; don’t think for a moment that what we are now witnessing is how it will unfold.
No ma’m
What we see now is the beginning; it will not end here.
Kristallnacht for the jewish folks of Germany was not the end game; it was the beginning.
Recall Larry Garthwohl, the Weather Underground infiltrator who asked his Undergound “compatriots” what will be done to all those Americans who will not submit to “re-education,” once they, the Weather Underground took power.
The response: about 25 million Americans will need to be liquidated.
This response came from American born and raised, highly educated folks.
The left wants to erase not only the existence of Trump from history (the way Stalin had his enemies removed from all photos) but all folks who support him AND his ideas.
The left means business; they have ZERO intention of “uniting the nation.”
I have found myself getting tired. It’s like arguing with zombies. You drive a stake through their position, clearly showing where it’s false and the next time it’s come back to life and you have to start all over again.
People are not simply ‘Tiring of the Enlightenment’; there are inherent flaws in the Enlightenment itself which inevitably lead to where we are today. Forgetting about the Enlightenment, any Civilization based upon any set of conditions/tenets will eventually slow burn its way toward some set of ‘Contradictions’ which derail it. Western Liberalism born out of the death throes of Christianity is just gasoline on the fire.
There is no get out of jail answer except that whatever must be done is not more of the same or some cutting and trimming of the pattern.
And then, if we’re lucky enough to still have some kind of Civilization when we’re (more like our grandchildren or more) are done… well guess what? Humanity will #$@% that one up too, given sufficient time. It’s what we do. Baked in.
It’s not all bad though. I can show you a Civilization that has survived more or less organically for 3,000 years give or take. Would you like some rice and a surveillance state with that? Sitars and Shit Stains are Complementary Next Door. Or you could just like, oh I dunno, start a tribe or something and be single-mindedly ethnocentric for a similar period of time. Was going to ask Sheldon Adelson about that but he’s just checked out.
There’s More Than One Way to Do it (motto of the Python Programming Language FWIW).
It’s a Big Picture Thing, this brick wall we’ve driven into at speed. Talking about individual bricks is a pleasant pastime but doesn’t really help us much. Trying to figure out how to build a society which doesn’t create roadblocks and derailments as necessarily *emergent phenomena* might be useful. Or bugging out to cabin in the woods 🙂
I assume most of you have read Dennis Prager’s “Now I understand the Good German.”
These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet German, Russian, etc. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.
What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter).
The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.
And, of course, anti-Semitism is part of the the left’s package. How could it not be when the left is all about denying merit and ability in favor of “Diversity.”
“It’s a slow, steady drip of hate until the water becomes a flood. That flood is not yet here, but it will be — when the state and mobs unite to eliminate their opponents.” Eris Guy
The State and snowflake mobs uniting to eliminate 74+++ Million Patriotic Americans would prove to be for them a self-inflicted mortal wound. It’s as true in politics as in physics, for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.
Rhetorical question; why is it that the bad guys always seem to think that only they can be ruthless?
Serious question; ever notice how, when evil loses to good, it often involves evil underestimating the value of good’s willingness to sacrifice?
The greater the evil, the greater the sacrifice required of good.
Brian E,
Your emboldened quote from LR Heckerman is a perfect example of someone failing to appreciate that the solution they offer, if implemented would also result in rebellion and war. Clearly, he’s also an amateur thinking that wars are won through tactics. In and of themselves, battles are often won and lost through superior or inferior tactics.
Logistical strategies win wars. All the logistics favor our side.
Perhaps he’s the reincarnation of one of the southern elite that at the start of the Civil War confidently opined that the war would be over in but a month or two.
“We conservatives have nothing in common with these libs.” Cornhead
We have nothing in common with the hard core left. Liberals are a different kettle of fish. Hard core leftists are to liberals, as the S.S. were to ordinary German soldiers.
Obviously, there’s a spectrum of radicalness among liberals. Most liberals suffer from some degree of cognitive dissonance. They’re socially ‘progressive’ and fiscally moderate. Willfully blind to the economic reality that fiscal moderation cannot be sustained in consert with socially ‘progressive’ policies.
Liberals are socially progressive yet wish to retain cultural foundations that socially progressive policies utterly ruin over time.
Most liberals want to have their cake and eat it too.
When your ‘Sciences’ are now built on shifting foundations of sand and held together with brittle dried epistemological bubble gum manufactured in China from environmentally friendly recycled residue from a Wuhan Wet Market… I’d say a lot of us have had just about enough of ‘Science’ and its grant-grubbing, agenda-setting, citation circle-jerking profaning of the very idea of Capital S Science.
If this makes me a pitchfork-wielding mouth breather, then can I please be issued with a titanium pitchfork? Don’t want to work up too much of a sweat.
Quoted above: “…we need to take a serious look at the type of church they attend and provide alternatives. Until the threat is gone, we need to curtail their rights initially”
Possibly the most evil thing in there is the word “we.” First, it excludes roughly half the country. Second, it assumes that it is only right that the half that constitutes “we” not only should have but does have the right, even the duty, to exercise absolute power over the others.
@Mac:
Well they can reflect upon their ‘We’ when the Other We reacts accordingly. It’ll all come out in the wash.
At least comments like that prove that leftists – at least some of them – are perfectly willing to violate the First Amendment. Their recent censorship isn’t remotely about “private companies enforcing their terms of service.” And even if someone isn’t technically violating the First Amendment, applauding censorship and deplatforming certainly suggests that one isn’t a big supporter of the First Amendment.
I agree it is evil. But many people nowadays do not understand that believing that they have the “duty to exercise absolute power over the others” is evil. They’ve been taught that wanting to be left alone, to not do whatever the government tells you to, to educate your kids the way you wish, is selfish. And that telling people what to do “for their own good” is kind and compassionate.
Democracy is so messy. That can be fixed. Trust us.
The Enlightenment started the process of taking responsibility for the the welfare of the ruled away from the rulers, and transferring it to the individual. Too many individuals find that too difficult to cope with. There are always people who will relieve them of the burden. At a cost.
The question for America is whether the number who are willing to give the responsibility back to the rulers constitutes a majority.
An ancillary question now, given our circumstances, is whether the wishes of the majority really matter any longer.
Many called this election the most pivotal. Maybe it was up to this point. I suggest that two years from now, and then two years beyond that have become tipping points for the Republic.
You are of course, correct, when you pin our education system as the point of departure. It is the cancer in the body, and has metastasized over the last 4 decades. We’re stage 4 now. It will take something drastic to stop what is happening. The reason is that there are multiple generations that have been purposefully miseducated- taught against all logic that A is not A. A thing is not what it is, but can be many different things- whatever we say it is. History is turned upside down and economics seem to not matter. It’s hard to turn a mind that simply does not understand what you are talking about.
The Enlightenment is indeed dying. Homer is laughed at while being tossed into the bonfires. Those who would mourn Homer will be removed as well. Or…we can fight back. But it has to start in two ways: (1) the schools. All school boards need to be taken back. That means some of us have to volunteer to get on those boards and make a difference locally. And somehow….somehow we need to encourage young conservative minds to go into education. One at a time, slowly, over time, this can be turned around. And (2) Quit spending time and money on people and companies who hate you. Get off of Twitter. Stop using Google products. No more Facebook. There are other options for your time and money. One person might not make a difference. But 80 million individuals can.
JohnTyler.
“The left wants to erase not only the existence of Trump from history (the way Stalin had his enemies removed from all photos) but all folks who support him AND his ideas.
The left means business; they have ZERO intention of “uniting the nation.”
I agree and that shall be their downfall. Had leftist ‘educators’ not so passionately indoctrinated the left’s young cannon fodder… Had the democrat party’s leadership in turn not been forced to politically accomodate their young radical base… They could have bided their time and in another generation or two, had it all fall into their lap. But of course, ideological fanatics are rarely capable of patience, the nearer to victory they be. They’re acting prematurely and as history has so often proven, timing is everything in a coup.
Zaphod,
“there are inherent flaws in the Enlightenment itself which inevitably lead to where we are today.”
Please eloborate on that assertion.
“any Civilization based upon any set of conditions/tenets will eventually slow burn its way toward some set of ‘Contradictions’ which derail it.”
Please elaborate on that assertion as well.
“Western Liberalism born out of the death throes of Christianity…”
Are you referring to the 19th & 20th centuries ‘progressive’ liberalism and not classical liberalism?
IMO, the repeated fall of Civilizations is a result of our ‘hardware’s ‘software’ being infected with a ‘virus’, colloquially known as “original sin”. That ‘virus’ is the ‘knowledge’ of right and wrong without the ability to clearly and reliably discern right from wrong.
Which if so, is why once again, American liberal’s good intentions are enabling the paving of another road to hell.
A computer infected with a debilitating virus cannot perform a ‘clean install’ upon itself. It takes outside intervention to eliminate the virus.
This is what Christians dimly intuit and of what being “born again” truly consists. Wherein they stumble is in failing to grasp that first one must “pick up their cross” and proceed upon the path to crucifixion of their old ‘software’ (their personhood) before they can be born again, i.e. receive a “clean install”.
As C.S. Lewis correctly realized, “”You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
We identify with our body and most of all with our personhood.
Crucifixion is the most terrifying of deaths. The Romans adopted it as the most intimidating of punishments because it is the most excruciating and lasting of ways to die.
Reportedly even Jesus, whether savior or delusional fanatic, literally sweat blood* in contemplation of his foreseen physical crucifixion.
*https://www.healthline.com/health/hematidrosis
I suspect that Jesus didn’t fully become the Christ until after his crucifixion and death.
No wonder the price of a clean install, being truly born again… literally giving up your personhood… is a price only one in a trillion are willing to pay.
@Geoffrey Britain:
There was this Oswald Spengler fellow, you know.
He went on at great length. Not because he was a bloviator, but because he *had to* do describe the problem. There is no royal road to understanding the coming collapse of Western Civ.
So no, I can’t and won’t bang out a precis here.
What’s wrong with Western Civ and for that matter why all Civs collapse or go into cycles is way beyond a blog post.
Blind Men Describing an Elephant. They’re all right… but you need to get a lot of angles to draw the beast.
And nobody can every really understand it. In the same way Soviets could not plan an economy…. Only the economy itself can plan itself.
All we can hope for is to read and understand deeply and try not to over-simplify except when absolutely necessary.
Half-schooled Over-simplification leads to smokestacks or trying to have another good run for 250 years.
Go read Spengler. Then Moldbug/Yarvin. It’s just a start.
No NO NNOOOOOO!
It is no longer that Republicans are as bad as Hitler.
Now Republicans are WORSE than Hitler.
Oldflyer,
“The question for America is whether the number who are willing to give the responsibility back to the rulers constitutes a majority.”
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
If you accept the premise that we are granted certain self-evident and unalienable rights, among which are “life, liberty and the [individual’s] pursuit of happiness” then no majority of fellow citizens, no matter how large… has the right to ‘cancel’ your unalienable rights.
Unalienable rights can only exist if they have been granted by a source that transcends mankind’s consensus of opinion.
Having rejected the premise of a creator, it necessarily follows that they of that persuasion believe that ‘rights’ are actually ‘privileges’ revocable by the State when doing so is for the “greater good”.
Newmanian,
“All school boards need to be taken back.”
I agree. But I am a bit uncertain as to how we might accomplish that… given that the left is supported by half of Americans and that 98% of the administrators and teachers are increasingly hard core leftists. And, that the left is undoubtedly moving to extend the fraudulent counting of votes down to the local levels. In which case, conservative will never be elected to school boards.
I believe that is what Gramsci labeled the “March Through the Institutions”. By “March” he didn’t mean ‘pass through’. Gramsci meant seize and hold.
Zaphod,
The purpose of prophets was to shed light upon different parts of the ‘elephant’.
Moses experienced exposure to full enlightenment, i.e. that burning bush.
Buddha reached the full enlightenment, i.e. Scientology’s “Clear” state that they pretend to themselves can be reached upon their own path to enlightenment’s mountain top.
I accept that Jesus became one with pure enlightenment. “I and my Father are One”. If so, he sees the whole elephant.
At this point, I’d happily settle for “another good run for 250 years”.
I’ve read a bit of Spengler and found him somewhat limited in the scope of his thinking. I’m not familiar with Moldbug/Yarvin and I’ll check them out. Even children have much to teach us.
Tuvea,
I believe you have the right of it.
Cornhead at 5:02 “We conservatives [law school faculty, Dean, etc] have nothing in common with these libs.”
THESE ARE NOT LIBERALS: They are straight up fascists! Call them that. PRACTICE RUTHLESS HONESTY, IN THEIR FACE. BE BRAVE!
GB:
Agreed re ‘prophets’.. but have to listen to the dark ones and holy fools as well as the Approved Prophets, if only to understand humanity’s failure modes better.
Wouldn’t we all, re the 250 years! 🙂 But I fear we can’t get near that following the same recipes.
Geoffrey Britain:
Minor quibble regarding the German Army and the SS. The German Army took part in much of the genocide and war crimes on the Eastern Front (starting in Poland and Barbarossa) IIRC. Also how they dealt with partisans in France after D-Day, Vosges Mountains for example, don’t show the German Army in a “good” light. The SS were more fanatical but also not as competent or professional, and somewhat more ruthless. See Military History Visualized and Military History Not Visualized for videos on the myths regarding the Heer (German Army).
While the pro-Commie Dems* have been looking into “McCarthyism” – blacklists – the blacklists have been looking into the Democrats.
What you focus on applies to all, not just the Abyss.
Which wolf wins? Good or Bad? – The wolf you feed.
Dems in power in academia have long been feeding on how “bad” / mean / selfish / sexist / racist Republicans are – thus they are evil.
First they are mocked, then discriminated against, now demonized and moving towards dehumanized. Loss of “Human Rights”.
Colleges which don’t have Reps should not get Federal Cash; their students should not get Fed. Loans, their Dem professors should not get Fed. Research grants – they should be identified as “discriminatory” organizations.
Too many Republicans, for too long, have avoided becoming Teachers. The USA needs more Rep professors and especially more Rep K-12 teachers. I don’t yet see any big Rep push to get more retired Reps and young Reps becoming teachers.
(*no “Left” on any ballot)
@Tom Grey:
Young Male Republican (Dear God… are you still talking about Republicans and Democrats? This is about as relevant Guelphs and Ghibellines. Please.) becomes Teacher.
Arrested for underage sexual grooming in 3, 2, 1. Not immediately believing ‘victims’ is violence, doncher know?
Nice Plan.
Might want to go Torquemada on your local school board and teaching faculty. They get to do long marches… we don’t.
Brian E said, “It’s like arguing with zombies. You drive a stake through their position, clearly showing where it’s false and the next time it’s come back to life and you have to start all over again.”
Evergreen clip from a Bob Hope movie made in 1940: watch it before YouTube cancels it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5PInhXkfvs&ab_channel=NickFurry
PA+Cat:
Don’t want to go all José Millán-Astray y Terreros on you… No Siree. For that would be fascistic and way uncouth. And there is nothing a Zaphod hates more than being considered uncouth. He’d rather go down to perdition than fight dirty.
However for some made of braver stuff there eventually comes a time when they feel a strong urge to drive the stake through the Zombie and not its premises and arguments.
¡Viva la Muerte! (Baby)
A very good and important post, Neo! It’s critically important for people to understand the totalitarianism inherent in ‘progressive education’ a la John Dewey and his ilk.
I spent several year of my life in graduate school primarily studying the enlightenments – what used to be called The Enlightenment is really a collection of a number of relatively distinct, related, but diverse enlightenments. Our English-speaking world’s ‘enlightenment’ was primarily the Scottish Enlightenment which has strong roots in Locke, whereas the various European enlightenments have Cartesian roots. The well-known French Enlightenment started off pretty well, but (to grossly, but I think usefully, oversimplify) took a very wrong turn in the transition of intellectual fashion from Voltaire to Rousseau. The German Enlightenment started fairly well also, looking to both Locke and Hume, but (again, to oversimplify) went off on its own overly abstract way with Kant… but I dirgress….
The Enlightenment gets something of a bad name for many reasons, but the most legitimate criticism isn’t the idea of progress, it’s the rap that the Rousseau-inspired collectivist (the general will) version of enlightenment led fairly directly to the excesses of the French Revolution and the Terror. A paradox that the culmination of the French Enlightenment on the Continent was its absolute opposite in Revolutionary romanticism….
It’s late and I haven’t time to lay it all out – it would take a long book – but much of what’s seen as left and ‘progressive’ in what came to be modern liberalism is in fact the exact opposite of the spirit which undergirded the enlightenments generally early on, and which continued to dominate the broader Anglosphere Enlightenment, which included many of the Founders – certainly Jefferson and Franklin, but Locke was widely read in the colonies.
Thinking is hard. Even many bright people don’t do more of it than they have to.
Brian E : “I have found myself getting tired. It’s like arguing with zombies. You drive a stake through their position, clearly showing where it’s false and the next time it’s come back to life and you have to start all over again.”
All they have are indoctrinated talking points.
David Rubin interviews Patrick Byrne recently (and not at all about digital vote theft). Byrne gives more biography, such as as the fact that battling three rounds of cancer found him doing his PhD in philosophy on America and justice, just to pass the time.
Byrne gives a concise short summary of the Left’s takeover of higher education.
12m-Fascism is a phenomenon of the Left. Now we have Big Tech censorship by corporate fascists.
-14:40 Do we teach history? Now we take statues down-school choice! Young don’t know Butkus about real history. Byrnes’ Black radical Muslim activist friends don’t know anything about history of black slavery. They know ideological talking points and spew them.
University rationales for socialism:
– 1980s socialism because of science and economics!
– 2000s socialism because ETHICS! Ethics programs proliferate.
– 2010s socialism because you’re racist!
– 2015 socialism because SHUT UP.
– 2019 socialism because Black Lives Matter
“It’s all intellectual goo!”
-18m they can’t even have the debate, so they don’t have one. They don’t want any debate,
Now – “Socialism because POWER.”
“It’s time we reclaim our word back,” Liberalism, says Byrne.
“What is the argument for free speech? The Electoral College? They [the young] have no idea.” “They don’t even have intelligent discussions” about our civilisation and our institutions and values, which college graduates used to be able to do.
It’s so disappointing (the decline of US education).
-25m The obsession on “Special Rights” creates this pandering by the state and creates disasters. It tears societies apart. My experience in China in the 1983-4 taught me this. It creates throne sniffing corruption for special favours.
“Social Media Purge Backfiring? & the Real History of Fascism | Patrick Byrne | TECH | Rubin Report”
Surprisingly, Byrne remains optimistic about the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut_KEsRlMmM&t=31s
“Thinking is hard. Even many bright people don’t do more of it than they have to.”
And our credentialed experts seem to follow “Close enough for government work” and it never does.
If this makes me a pitchfork-wielding mouth breather, then can I please be issued with a titanium pitchfork?
Angus Trim, Apocalypse Kukri.
T10 Ryujin katana.
Don’t worry, I got this (2020 2021)
May I suggest that anyone over-enamored with Democracy and the Enlightenment watch Putin answering this question at a presser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ2NAfXB0rI
Turn on the subtitles.
May or may not have been a Dorothy Dixer; that’s not the point. When was the last time you heard a Western Leader talking sense like this?
Also, how many Somalis has he invited to go live in Nizhny Novgorod and join the local police force so they can shoot up the Native Stock? Clearly Russia has a long way to go to catch up with Minnesota.
End-result of Enlightenment, Classical Liberalism, etc. *is* Trump + Turncoat Pence, Biden + Madam President-in-Waiting Gobble@#$%. Trump is lesser of the two weevils.
Authoritarianism has it’s own problems; notably succession. Still, can anyone say that the end game of ‘Democracy’ doesn’t end up in Succession Crises?
Good Rule of Thumb: Anyone who has been demonised in mainsteam media, plus by Conservative Inc… you need to hie yourself off to YouTube or wherever and start listening and reading to what they actually *say* as opposed to what Gatekeepers tell you they say.
Sure he’s knocked off a few opponents over the years. It’s politics. You think we don’t do that in the West? What was BLM when you get down to it?
Anyone seen Seth Rich lately? How do I transliterate Arkanicide into Cyrillic?
Only making these drive-by points to stress the real point here which is that we need to think about the idols we worship. What is this Constitution? Republic? Democracy? Enlightenment? Tolerance? I could go on.
Not saying throw them out and line the roads with crucifixions. But it’s time to go back to basics and take a good hard look at our societal givens.
Another in the long line of horror stories from the Twilight Zone aka your local school.
Some of you may have already seen this posted at City Journal.
https://christopherrufo.com/woke-elementary/
subhead: A Cupertino elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.”
It’s just as bad as it looks.
AesopFan:
It’s only going to get better:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/01/15/joe-biden-day-1-order-on-transgender-rights-in-sports-and-bathrooms/
Just a matter of time before someone snaps and things light up. There’s only so much provocation that people can take.
On “taking back the school boards” –
Yeah, no: it’s an uphill climb both ways in the snow.
Our local conservatives tried hard a few years ago and elected some sane board members.
The teacher unions aka legal Mafia forced through a recall petition, dumped money into the election, and stationed “grassroots” protestors at strategic street corners.
The recall succeeded and they were replaced with the usual hard-core leftist cadre.
I looked up the stats later, and the conservatives were outspent literally 10-to-1 (that’s $10K to $1000 in real numbers).
My most fervent wish is that the school systems are irretrievably damaged by the lockdowns, even though the need for those is going to magically end at sunrise on January 20.
Second best is enough parents losing their blinders.
Going after the home-schoolers now will be harder than it was a couple of decades ago.
And more blatantly obvious than the in-school indoctrination that slipped under the radar.
To Brian E on January 15, 2021 at 4:39 pm —
Related and not encouraging: one of Hitler’s unambiguously evil programs was euthanizing “unfit” children – and then adults – disguised as a health measure. Once they were removed from their families, they were killed and their cause of death falsified. After awhile, the Nazis quit pretending.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program
“Historians estimate that the Euthanasia Program, in all its phases, claimed the lives of 250,000 individuals. — Like those who planned the physical annihilation of the European Jews, the planners of the Euthanasia Program imagined a racially pure and productive society. They embraced radical strategies to eliminate those who did not fit within their vision.”
The Left has continued the attack on women, children, and family using abortion “rights” and “feminist liberation.”
But Republicans are the ones vilified as “Nazis” today.
Don’t get me started.
John Hayward aka Doc Zero: “Ideology for Dummies”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1350088084529045506.html
“Time once again to emphasize the differences between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism. They’re often used as synonyms but they are different, although they do tend to lead to each other. Order one, and the other two are usually delivered soon enough.”
Excerpts would not do justice to his finely-tuned essay.
Bonus for staying up late: Capitalism through the Looking-Glass
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1350062754338660352.html
“The coming year will see Biden Democrats walking slowly through a vast field of small businesses exhausted by the battle with the coronavirus, shooting any who can still move. Big Tech will hold a pillow over the faces of those who cry out too loudly.”
The Bee is always a step ahead of me.
https://babylonbee.com/news/dc-area-homeschool-family-adds-armor-plating-to-15-passenger-van
On the Rufo Report about the Critical Race Theory for Grade School – Not the Bee has illuminatingly awful details in its screenshots of the curriculum materials.
And some information on just how oppressed those poor kids are.
https://notthebee.com/article/elementary-school-goes-full-marxist-requires-kids-to-rank-their-power-and-privilege-assess-their-racial-and-sexual-identities
Remember how confident everyone on the Right is that, when Civil War 2.0 finally arrives, the Red States will just hunker down and let the Blue Cities starve themselves into surrender, because the Rural Hick Deplorables produce all the food?
Somebody heard us talkin’.
https://notthebee.com/article/bill-gates-has-been-quietly-buying-up-242000-acres-and-is-now-the-top-private-farmland-owner-in-america-why
“Oh, also, you might be interested to know that Jeff Bezos owns nearly twice as much land as Gates. It’s not all farmland, but the Amazon CEO has 420,000 acres with his name on it.”
(Sure, there are source reports on the REAL media sites, but NTB is a lot more fun to read.)
#AlwaysMyPresident
#Twixit
Aesop, yes, I saw that as well. Very… interesting. Still, I wonder: when it comes harvest time, how does the illustrious owner propose to protect his crop? Not that I’m necessarily saying it needs protecting, but sometimes things just go bad, you know.
Actually genuinely liberal thought is banned too…only the Party Line is now allowed to be taught. Read Ayn Rand’s “We the Living” for a good description of the Soviet model now deploying here.
Farming and wind turbines appear to be compatible uses of the same property. It may be that these large purchasers of farmland are counting on income streams from electricity, as well from crops.
David Foster – that is true. It would be interesting to compare maps of ‘peak wind’ patterns on the continent against the locations of the parcels in question. I guess I was thinking a little more apocalyptically.
Laurence Jarvik…”Read Ayn Rand’s “We the Living” for a good description of the Soviet model now deploying here.” By far the best-written of her books, probably because based in part on her own experiences in the Soviet Union.
There is also a quite good movie based on the book, made in Fascist Italy of all places. (the censors were a little slow on the uptake, but they did eventually catch on)
I quoted from ‘We the Living’ in my 2014 post, Life in the Fully Politicized Society:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/42932.html
David+Foster what an excellent article…made me realize Twitter and other social media have become the “Wall Newspapers” of our country—sad!
Thanks, Laurence. “Twitter and other social media have become the “Wall Newspapers” of our country”…I’m afraid so.
Speaking of social media, see also my post Freedom, the Village, and Social Media:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58551.html
Occasionally you see comments about the left “over reaching” or “eating their own,” which ultimately leads to their demise.
The problem is the time it takes for its demise can be 50 to 100 years or more.
Just look at the longevity of the former USSR (70 years), N.Korea (70 years),
Cuba (60 years), the Eastern Bloc nations (45 years), Venezuela (so far 20 years about) , Communist China (70 years).
Four of the above nations are still going strong (strong, as in the ruling elite doing just fine, economically that is, and maintaining a stranglehold on power).
It’s mostly true that eventually a totalitarian state will come apart but oft times it must be helped in falling apart.
As long as the tyrannical leaders of totalitarian state are willing to use any and all means to subdue the citizenry , including mass murder, they will maintain their grip on power.
FDR in his 1944 state of the union said a return to normalcy was a surrender to the forces we’re currently fighting. So it goes farther back than Willkie; Harding and Coolidge were nazis too.
It help to begin by assuming that no word spoken by the left has any real meaning.
So Neo, a couple of posts back, you wrote about clashes between Neo-Nazis and Antifa. There are no criteria for the left to call someone a Neo-Nazi; I doubt very many of those “Neo-Nazis” held beliefs which would justify the use of the term.
Bill: “no word spoken by the left has any real meaning.”
Yep, “the issue is never the issue”. Also there is one of my favorite quotes, ironically attributed to Mao Tse-tung: “I like dealing with rightists. They tell you what they really think unlike the leftists who say one thing and mean another”.
AesopFan —
It makes a nice clickbaity headline, but all that farmland isn’t really very much.
242,000 acres = 378 sq. mi. = a square 19.5 miles on a side
420,000 acres = 656 sq. mi. = a square 25.6 miles on a side
That would disappear into some family-owned ranches I’m aware of. Not to mention, say, Iowa.