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Open thread 6/22/21 — 27 Comments

  1. For a moment I thought that was a burl, not a rock.

    Are we back to normal yet? Looks and feels like it in southern seacoast Maine.

  2. The author of the post here, Michael Rectenwald, who I see was a professor at NYT from 2008 to 2019, has a nice critique of John Stuart Mill’s famous essay, On Liberty, regarding free speech.
    https://mises.org/wire/john-stuart-mill-marketplace-ideas-and-minority-opinion

    He cites Mises’ essay, Liberty and Property, prominently, which I linked, including the original audio, in this thread:
    https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/05/18/leftist-influence-in-the-military/

    That I linked again recently with David Gordon’s extension of Mises’ analysis:
    https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/06/18/open-thread-6-18-21/#comments

    Rectenwald’s critique is timely and informative, and explains how what Mill said applies (or does not) to contemporary issues. He cites others involved in the debate, including political philosopher Jill Gordon. What Rectenwald says is something I’ve recently thought myself. I don’t believe he cited James Madison, and I haven’t read it for a long time, but I believe it also relates to Madison’s argument in Federalist 10, which talked about factions, both majority and minority.

  3. Ty Smith’s recent rant against CRT at a school board went viral. I imagine many here have seen it, however may not know he is also Modern Renaissance Man, who does music reaction videos, some of which neo has featured in posts.

    There has been a leftist response — mostly smearing Smith instead of meeting his arguments. Two such “smears” were that he was Candace Owens’ brother and Larry Elder’s nephew, therefore a conservative plant. Well, that explains it!

    Those rumors started on his YouTube channel comments. At the time he was apolitical other than his natural conservatism as a Christian. However, in response Smith read up on Owens and Elder, then linked up with them. Now he has become much more explicitly political and will continue to do so.

    It’s hard not to like the guy — his energy is contagious. I’m glad he’s on our side.

    –“IL Father Destroys CRT Exposed as @Candace Owens brother and @Larry Elder with Epoch Times Nephew?!”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBE_CnVfwNE

  4. huxley, yes, that was quite something. That’s kind of what bringing an F-16 to a knife fight looks like, I thought.

  5. huxley – thanks for the information on Ty Smith. Interesting what happens when you stir people up with insults.

    A similar thing happened to a young music composer who got cancelled.
    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/06/15/a-composer-condemned-arson-and-now-cant-get-any-work-n1454752

    This is a story about the exercise of raw power and the cowardice of those unwilling to stand up to the injustice of it.

    Daniel Elder is a Nashville composer of choral music who had been making a name for himself in the music industry. His first commercial album had just been released and things were going well for the young musician.

    Then came the death of George Floyd, and riots and protests rocked Nashville. Elder lived a couple of blocks from the courthouse and his neighborhood was victimized by rioters who smashed windows in the courthouse, spray-painted graffiti and set it afire.

    Elder was upset by social media posts in his feed that justified radicalism and violence. Although a self-described man of the center-left, he couldn’t abide people justifying destruction.

    Before deleting his Instagram account in disgust, he made one final post:

    “Enjoy burning it all down, you well-intentioned, blind people. I’m done.”

    That’s it. Pretty bland to precipitate the consequences that followed.
    But there are apparently a lot of people whose day job is trolling the internet for random individuals to target. His social media were filled with real hate speech (funny how nobody ever gets cancelled for that), choirs tossed his music, and his publisher, GIA Publications, dropped him after he refused to issue the groveling apology they wrote for him. (NOTE: remember not to buy anything published by this outlet.)

    “I chose to be that guy who didn’t issue the apology,” he says. “Things went from there and it wasn’t good.”

    It turned from simply nauseating to inexplicably bizarre.

    There are no clear boundaries that normal people can avoid and not transgress. But that’s the point, isn’t it? If everyone is worried about causing offense, the racial bullies win. They alone get to decide what is offensive and what is not. They alone decide what is racist and what isn’t.

    That is an enormous amount of power in the hands of very few people. And as the Elder case shows, they regularly abuse it over trifles.

    “Powerless,” indeed.

    But, the attention may have generated one of those rare things that Neo specializes in noting: a Change Moment.

    https://nypost.com/2021/06/16/musician-canceled-for-speaking-out-against-arson/

    Elder always considered himself a man of the center-left. He was not particularly political or outspoken, but he supported liberal causes, including police reform and opposition to racism. The fact that he was on the same side as the progressive activists “made this sort of a strange betrayal,” he says.

    The post was unambiguous: Elder was criticizing the activists who had set the courthouse on fire. He did not malign their cause or their ethnicity (and in fact, the perpetrator was white). He did not attack the Black Lives Matter movement or criminal justice reform. He implied that the militants had good motives (”well-intentioned”) but were oblivious (”blind”) when it came to the self-defeating nature of their tactics.

    For Elder, the consequences were far-reaching. The coronavirus pandemic had already upended his business: In the era of COVID-19, few activities had become as verboten as choir singing. Without the support of a publisher and professional network, Elder’s work was impossible. Moreover, local choral directors refuse to do business with him because of the controversy. They are afraid to associate with him, or to be seen as defending him in any way.

    “It’s a bad look for them,” says Elder. “It’s really quite extreme, the effect this has had.”

    The toll on Elder’s mental well-being has been equally catastrophic: losing countless friends, colleagues, and fans is no small matter for an artist. He has seen a therapist and a psychiatrist, and he says he has needed to be “talked off the ledge” several times. Needless to say, he has struggled to compose new music since everything fell apart.

    Nevertheless, the experience has positively impacted Elder in one way, he tells me: It has made him less ideologically narrow-minded.

    “Because I was exiled, I started listening to voices on the right and the center, especially these classical liberals who have been exiled from the leftist movement,” he says. “The strange silver lining is this shook me out of my prejudices a little bit.”

    As Spartacus says, it’s a process.
    Guess I’ll look up his music (although I’m sure YT has cancelled him by now) and add him to the list of my eclectic prolery.

    https://www.danieleldermusic.com/about

    As of June 2020 I permanently removed my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. I believe these platforms are encouraging a very dangerous division among us—a divide that is exponentially growing year-by-year—something very much out of line with what I strive to achieve as an artist. I am extraordinarily grateful for the following I have achieved in only eight years as a professional composer. Social media was valuable for advertising, but I’ve learned over the past decade that it isn’t the path towards musical and commercial success—it is merely an illusion. And though it incrementally helped me gain visibility when I had none, now that I have more fully emerged as a figure in the music world I deem it time to abandon this particular path in favor of a more traditional public presence. This is both out of an acknowledged privilege and gratitude of having achieved said visibility, and out of a more personal desire to stake my public position against the harm these platforms are doing to our cultural and political relationships. As a composer I’ve sought and will always continue to seek ways to unify our world through the power of the music I create. I strongly believe it’s the ways we agree that are important, not the ways we disagree. For me the cost of social media has finally outweighed its benefits.

    I sincerely thank all of you who have followed my accounts these past years and encourage you to follow my YouTube channel. There I will continue to post the newest recordings of my work for you to see, hear, and hopefully enjoy.

    ?

    For those of you who are just beginning to follow careers in composition, I encourage you to make your own decisions about these platforms and I don’t expect you to follow mine. But do remember that you don’t have to use social media to find your audience. It may take longer, but it’s entirely attainable. I achieved all my major successes entirely offline and you can too.

  6. AesopFan:

    The Daniel Elder story took another piece of my heart. In my church-going, choir-singing days, I’m pretty sure we had sheet music from GIA. The liberal Christian church community has much to answer for.

    The Episcopalian prayers at Communion sometimes include this:
    ___________________________

    Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only and not for strength…
    ___________________________

    Prayers of strength for Daniel Elder.

  7. What usually happens when an unmoveable object meets an unstoppable force.

  8. h/t JOM2 blog

    Caleb Hull@CalebJHull
    Absolutely amazing how the people who had “any functioning adult 2020” as their bumper sticker ended up with Joe Biden

  9. That’s it. Pretty bland to precipitate the consequences that followed.
    But there are apparently a lot of people whose day job is trolling the internet for random individuals to target. His social media were filled with real hate speech (funny how nobody ever gets cancelled for that), choirs tossed his music, and his publisher, GIA Publications, dropped him after he refused to issue the groveling apology they wrote for him. (NOTE: remember not to buy anything published by this outlet.)

    The social media trolls are odious, but the real criminals here are officials of GIA. If GIA had a board that was worth squat, both of them would have been out on the curb for this behavior. Note also, Elder was subject to widespread shunning by people who had been clients and colleagues. The whole culture he was a part of is rotten. That the word-merchant sector behave this way is deplorable but familiar. What’s appalling is that it’s been spreading to sectors where it was formerly absent. We learned this in 2014, when an ENT doctor in Massachusetts was dismissed from his clinical faculty and stripped of admitting privileges at four area hospitals for writing an inter-office memorandum saying that homosexuality was associated with a menu of undesirable phenomena and should be discouraged. Institutions generally given to madcap secrecy about personnel matters, but he was subject to a public denunciation. What we face as a society is that it’s bog standard among our professional-managerial stratum to be at war with the rest of us and anything but loyal to the country in which they’ve gained their influence and affluence. This will not end well.

  10. Quillette just published the text of an interview between Jonathan Kay (who works for Quillette) and Daniel Elder:

    https://quillette.com/2021/06/22/a-conversation-with-daniel-elder-the-choral-music-composer-who-was-cancelled-for-opposing-arson/

    Among other observations, Elder notes how choral music itself has changed in recent years: ” . . . we must underline how the ‘choral community’ we speak of here comprises far more than just church choirs. It is a heterogeneous blend of high school, college, community, and professional ensembles as well. Therefore, the hyper-liberal nature of academia has heavily infiltrated this community. Through the mid-20th century, choral music remained deeply steeped in the sacred tradition (as you’ve suggested), but that’s changed dramatically in [recent] decades. Even on the church music side, many choir directors prefer substituting sacred texts with gender inclusive language, applying scripture to modern social activism (here’s a recent example), and other common progressive stances. I would opine that, with [some] exceptions, the choral community is every bit as liberal as the rest of the arts.”

  11. Even on the church music side, many choir directors prefer substituting sacred texts with gender inclusive language, applying scripture to modern social activism (here’s a recent example), and other common progressive stances. I would opine that, with [some] exceptions, the choral community is every bit as liberal as the rest of the arts.”

    They get away with it, courtesy pastors and parish councils who don’t tell them they do it according to spec or they don’t work here anymore. You don’t need an elaborate musical program in any liturgical church. Plainchant will do, always and everywhere. A choir of three or more women in the loft chanting the ordinaries, a cantor or men’s schola in the sanctuary, chanting the propers.

  12. I want to high-light a couple of other excerpts from the Quillette interview of Daniel Elder, one of which is horrifying and the other encouraging.

    This is blatant intimidation and blackmail:

    Quillette: That petition is really something. Given this climate of hysteria, weren’t you tempted to sign the apology that was prepared for you by GIA—even putting aside the creepy show-trial aspect of being asked to sign an apology someone else wrote?

    Elder: First, there’s an important context around all this. The apology draft was not offered as a way out. Within two hours, and before I responded to [its] offer, GIA wrote: “Here is what GIA is going to post to social media so that you’re in the loop.” There was no “unless” included. Because of mob pressure, they were going to publish the statement whether or not I apologized. [This was] followed by: “At this point, we are not stating that we will remove your back catalog works. We think that this can be salvaged if you are able to put an apology out there, and we want that for you.” As I read it, [it] suggest[ed] amends [would be made] after the company publicly disowned my views and labeled them racist. This is critical, because it happens all the time. Someone that arouses the attention of the online mob rarely escapes punishment by prostrating. Stand and face your executioner.

    This is more hopeful, and echoes what Solzhenitsyn said about finally realizing he no longer had to bow to the Soviet tyranny.*

    Elder: …I want to believe that anyone and everyone can choose to stand up for important truths (mine was that violence is violence, and discrimination is discrimination, no matter the context) and that I merely reached a point where I chose to risk everything [for these truths]. The media prefers to focus on how horrible this experience was for me, but an important facet easily lost in this narrative is how free I’ve felt since I made the choice. The defamation hurt, the career losses were devastating blows, but I had a bright flame of integrity burning at my core and, from this, I had the strength to slowly rebuild my life. My career direction is still uncertain, but personally I’ve become stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. I say this as an encouragement to the silent majority all around us: If you’re willing to endure the painful trial of self, you will be better for it in the end. And, with enough of us, the world will be better, too.

    *In his “Live not by lies” essay, which is appropriate. “Therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies!”

  13. A good discussion of Solzhenitysyn’s essay with LINK and excerpts, especially how to put the decision into action.
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/live-not-by-lies-solzhenitsyn-deneen-obergefell/

    Dreher’s conclusion – in 2015, and it’s only gotten worse:
    “This is not going to be limited to academia. Wherever orthodox Christianity comes to be regarded as an ideology of bigotry, Christians will be required to live by lies, or put their livelihoods at risk. No, it’s not the Soviet Union, not even close. But the principle behind Solzhenitsyn’s advice on how to have a clean conscience and to maintain your dignity is still helpful.”

    https://web.archive.org/web/20210224095759/http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolhenitsynLies.php

  14. Follow-up from a LINK in the Obergefell symposium, which pointed strongly to the situation we are in today with corporations acting like Mafia Godfathers.

    https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/the-power-elite

    As the dust from the recent explosion over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act begins to settle, one thing is clear: Republicans and Christians lost, Democrats and gay activists won. Republican leaders initially ­supported the legislation for what was likely a combination of strategic political reasons and the belief that religious freedom is a positive good. Passage of RFRA laws was an intensifying demand in conservative Christian circles.

    Having concluded that the culture war was lost, conservative Christians retreated to the castle keep of American political order: the right to the free exercise of religion, a right that had been bolstered by the bipartisan passage of the federal RFRA law in 1993. Governor Mike Pence no doubt thought he was practicing good politics: giving his base something they dearly wanted, while only potentially alienating committed members of the opposition party.

    Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, and the Republican party were not blindsided by opposition to RFRA by gay rights activists. What knocked them back were major corporations, such as Apple, Walmart, and Angie’s List, and organizations such as the NCAA that denounced the law, in many cases announcing boycotts of Indiana. Had the only appreciable opposition to RFRA come from gay rights activists, RFRA would have been a smashing political success for Republicans. It would have made the right enemies while generating gratitude and energy in the base. They did not expect their usual friends in corporate America to join the opposition, which was an idiotic miscalculation given the fact that establishment outrage scuttled the Arizona RFRA last year.

    The analysis is long, and will be very familiar now, but it was kind of a new thing then.
    Corporations aren’t interested in anything but profit, and are increasingly run by left-leaning elites, whose personal values line up with causes that the culture of America (at least the loudest parts of it) are supporting.

  15. AMAZE YOUR FRIENDS, and annoy your enemies! With

    “Uncovering the origins of Covid-19: a scientific discussion” from several days ago at the Hudson Institute.

    Dr. Steve Quay and physicist Richard Muller, authors of the WSJ op-ed telling us how unique this virus is and how it’s features are absent in nature, but present in several lab experiments from three continents.

    Quay’s presentation is devastating to folks still denying the truth.

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DS4k3aLjO4zw&ved=2ahUKEwjT-dmwoK3xAhWc4zgGHY9YAloQFnoECBEQAg&usg=AOvVaw3u0WvXIKWiVWD1HizLtT8i

  16. @TJ “Uncovering the origins of Covid-19: a scientific discussion”

    All researchers for a Nobel-level type scientist would decline to help Richard Muller in accurately interpreting early articles claiming it wasn’t a lab leak — for fear of alienating and being blacklisted by China. “The Chinese Communist Party will put an end to it.” Shocker.

    This was after the very conclusive presentation by Steve Quay about evidence that it was a lab leak. Muller’s part starts at 30:30. The part I cited above starts at about 32:30.

  17. Read this and weep:

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/06/doofus-of-day-1081.html

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expose-nuclear-weapons-secrets-via-flashcard-apps/

    “For US soldiers tasked with the custody of nuclear weapons in Europe, the stakes are high. Security protocols are lengthy, detailed and need to be known by heart. To simplify this process, some service members have been using publicly visible flashcard learning apps — inadvertently revealing a multitude of sensitive security protocols about US nuclear weapons and the bases at which they are stored.”

    J____ F_____g C_____!

    How is it even possible to be this @#$%ing moronic?

    Not a serious military. Not a serious country.

    Need. To. Clean. House.

  18. As to whether a physical object is “real” or not.

    When trying to evaluate anything that we perceive and trying to judge whether what we perceive is actually there or is “real” or not, we should always keep uppermost in our minds the fact that we, as humans (and when in optimal condition), are only capable of perceiving a very small slice of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and the forces and energetic particles coursing through the Universe around us.

    To use Luiz Alizondo’s recent, very apt analogy, we are like a person sitting in the topmost row of seats in a gigantic stadium, observing the football game going on–way, way below us—with one eye, looking at it through a straw.

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