Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
A very brave law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, named Amy Wax has been publishing the astounding argument that human beings in America would benefit from adopting “bourgeois values” and behaving accordingly. Bourgeois (Boozh-wah, for the underspeeched) may be an unfortunate term-of-art, since it came to be used as a pejorative back in the old hippie days — something that Ms. Wax might remember, since she is a Baby Boomer — but what else might you call this bundle of traditional values: honesty, fidelity, thrift, temperance, punctuality, fortitude, gratitude, dedication, kindness, loyalty, et cetera?
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A glance at Amy Wax’s credentials might induce a head-snap.
Amy Laura Wax received a B.S. summa cum laude in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale in 1975. She was then a Marshall Scholar in Philosophy, Physiology, and Psychology at Somerville College at Oxford University. She earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1981, training as a neurologist, and received a J.D. from Columbia in 1987, where she was an editor of the Law Review. She was a Law Clerk to the Honorable Abner J. Mikva, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987-88. From 1988-94, she served as Assistant to the Office of the Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice, where she argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. Wax was a member of the Legal Affairs Committee, American Academy of Neurology from 1986-1992. In 1994, she joined the faculty of UVA [U. of Virginia]. She taught courses in civil procedure, labor law, and poverty law and welfare policy. She became Class of 1948 Professor of Scholarly Research in Law from 2000-01. After becoming a visiting professor to Penn Law School in 2000, she joined its faculty in 2001.
By some miracle, she didn’t end up a professor of Intersectional Gender Justice. Of course, the Social Justice commissars around the country regard her as just another neo-Nazi punk committing violence-through-speech against the ethno-sexual minorities who seek to throw off the shackles of Cis-White Privilege oppression. In an op-ed essay in the Philadelphia Inquirer (co-authored with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego School of Law) titled Paying the Price for Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture, Wax argued that “the single-parent, anti-social habits, prevalent among some working-class whites, the anti ‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks” and the “anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants” is not suited to a First-World 21st Century Environment.
The casual observer (from Mars) might take all that as self-evident, but it’s a hard sell nowadays, especially in Ivory Towerville, where, supposedly, the rectified essences of abiding human intelligence are said to dwell. That super-refined scholarly nation-within–a-nation is also surely walled off from the more unappetizing realities of what an American-style First-World 21st Century Environment actually is. In fact, that very “environment” is mostly characterized by a breakdown of just about everything that might promote the formerly eternal verities. It has been accompanied move-for-move by a breakdown in economic relations that leaves a big chunk of the national demographic peon-ized, bereft of work that is either meaningful or pays enough to support a family, and places them at the mercy (actually, there is no mercy) of gigantic, dishonest, avaricious companies and public institutions driven by stupid crypto-religious ideologies.
Oddly, the personal economic calamity represented by that trend is mirrored on the Ivy League campuses where a tiny cadre of tenured professors enjoys immunity from both impoverishment and real critical thinking, while an ever-expanding corps of serf-like adjunct teachers struggles to pay the light bill — and a new breed of diversity deans and other administrative hierophants feeds gluttonously at the trough of the college loan racket.
The main criticism of Amy Wax’s prescription for cultural improvement is simply that it’s not possible to go back to the economically stable world of the 1950s that supported the roster of human virtues she wants to bring back online. It may be so, alas, but that still doesn’t obviate the basic value of behavioral norms. And deep down in their dark Gnostic hearts, the Social Justice Commissariat must agree. Otherwise, why would they be promoting so strenuously the exemplary behavior of the DACA “Dreamers.”
Amy Wax was hammered by her colleagues at the Penn Law School for daring to express these ideas. More than half of the law faculty signed an “open letter” of censorious opprobrium against her. They “categorically rejected” her arguments without offering any counter-arguments. The law school’s chapter of the Lawyer’s Guild is maneuvering to get her fired from her teaching duties. That’s how we roll now in Witch Hunt Nation. I think Amy Wax has the fortitude to get through this. But will the universities ever recover?
Anyone who still needs to work is facing an army of these troglodytes. One has to wonder how they come to their world views???
Bad acid.
“The main criticism of Amy Wax’s prescription for cultural improvement is simply that it’s not possible to go back to the economically stable world of the 1950s that supported the roster of human virtues she wants to bring back online.”
Says who?
This is an interesting twist in their opposition. Up until the last few years the old position was that no such world ever existed. Now they acknowledge that it was in fact a reality, but that we can’t return to those values (I am assuming of course that they aren’t implying time travel, but rather the embrace of tradition Western cultural norms).
It is not possible to return to such values and keep the ubiquitous conveniences and cheap entertainments of modernity. Very, very few are willing to give up the ease of fully stocked grocery stores and pre-packaged meals delivered to ones doorstep for the hard work of growing and raising one’s own food. Very, very few are willing to give up the mind-numbing, addictive ease of vapid entertainments being broadcast into our lives every second of every day for the difficult, intellectual challenge of reading literature. Very, very few are willing to give up the easy narcissism of social media for the awkward and at times painful challenge of making God-honest, real-life friends.
I, for one, wish for nothing more than to live a life of old-fashioned values and yet continually fail to overcome my addiction to convenience of 21st century life. In other words, when even someone who understands the value of meaning over convenience and yearns for a return of old-time values cannot overcome the inertia of modernity what chance is there for society at large when the vast majority are so immersed in the Matrix of modernity that they cannot even envision an alternative or if so are completely repulsed by the very notion?
‘Murika as a whole is a massive party in the penthouse suite of the Tower of Babel. It is the rare person indeed that can and will choose to leave such lavish surroundings before the fall.
The Libertarian Party is making great gains by introducing virtues back into political mainstream. With the Non-Agression Principle (NAP) as the basic principle, it becomes mandatory that virtues guide behavior, virtues like justice (the most important virtues when it comes to politics and government) empathy, compassion, trust, respect, mercy, forgiveness, etc.
Enough of endless wars without victory. Force is a feature of government and religion that must be eradicated. Replace it with peace and prosperity. Persuasion, not force.
Libertarianism (I was once a ZEALOT) fails for the same reason as does socialism: it ignores human nature. Humans have a collective nature and an individual nature. The latter is all libertarianism imagines.
A market-ordered world sounds great on paper, but as with all things Utopian, it is an end state—a dead end. Humans will NEVER accept the notion of surviving solely on the basis of their own capabilities in a dispassionate market.
The future is war. Those who created the world we enjoy now were a tiny minority and are envied and loathed by the masses of people who cannot and who, in a thousand years, COULD NOT create this cornucopia. Their hatred of the descendants of the creators is EVERYWHERE around us. Like Khmer Rouge zealots, they will murder the geese that lay the golden eggs rather than be forever in their shadow.
High IQ, fair-skined, low-time-preference people whose ancestors largely lived inside the Hajnal Line during the Middle Ages are unique among all of humanity, and we engender such hatred as we do because of our abilities AND OUR GENEROSITY.
Our whole culture cannot escape its open disdain for other peoples. Even the SJW’s in Hollywood adopting sub-Saharan African kids reveal through their actions that whitey is superior, only whitey can uplift those who, since the Dawn of Man, wallow in savagery.
So my friend, give up on libertarianism. It is a dead end.
Humans have a collective nature and an individual nature.
Bullshit. Your “collective nature” is only the individual nature of some humans. As for libertarianism, my ‘political’ thinking has distilled essentially to this: There are two mutually exclusive types of bipedal primates with language; those who desire to impose their will upon others by force, and those who have no such desire. Until the latter set aside their differences – and their scruples – and act in concert to exterminate the former, the world will continue to descend into a 1984-esque totalitarian hell. Hence, as one might suspect, I am not optimistic about the future of humanity.
And the lamb shall lay down with the lion?
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Robert (QSLV)
4 werdz for you.
Too Little, Too Late.
Returning to concepts like Freedom of Association and Private Property would go a LONG ways to fixing the ills of this world. That and minding your own f***ing business!! Too many people obsessed with what other people are doing/thinking.
If Trump ever studied a dictionary and could put more than 4 words together in a coherent sentence, he would sound like Kunstler.
Jim must have taken the whole bottle of red pills at once. He no longer sounds anything like the guy who voted for Obama.
The irony is that Penn has featured all the little wonderful sayings from Ben Franklin on thrift, hard work and other virtues etc. by engraving them right into the Walnut Walk pavement which runs throughout campus. But apparently a Penn professor cannot advocate these virtues in public. As a Penn alum and Penn parent, I find this pretty confusing.
So now I guess these anti-Prof. Wax assholes on the Law Faculty will sign a petition to dig up Walnut Walk. While they’re at it, why not destroy Franklin’s statue and blow up College Hall?
Watching Liberals/SJWs disappear up their own assholes with bizarre feats of pretzel logic is the spectator sport of the new century.
The ad’s now have crotch shots!
However you gotta remove the faggots kissing and hugging.
I never see these ads. I must be so out of the marketing demographic that they see my IP and just say “next”.
You must get the ad’s with sheep and other farm animals.
That was low Dutchy. Funny, but low.
dutch,
have i ever told you what a sexy moniker you have?
“…However you gotta remove the faggots kissing and hugging.”
why, you getting all “excited”?
Amy Wax for President! More realistically, she could always go back to medicine….
There indeed was an economically stable world back in the 50’s and 60’s, but it was an agricultural world where people made a living from the sweat of their brow and the callouses on their hands. Those days are gone folks and they will never return. When a person’s life is dependent upon them growing their own food then life takes on a wholly different meaning. You either understand this or you don’t: It cannot be explained only experienced. thanks
Yes, the factories, cotton and corn fields, pig and chicken farms, pastures and cattle, small churches and service stations, local radio stations that played good music and wholesome TV, home canning and brewing, church league softball, are all gone. I am shocked at how fast it all went to Hell; how ignorant, immature, lazy, angry, tattooed and drugged so many youth are now. The criminal ZOG controls everything; Truth, Justice and the American Way are being murdered. Dear God, The Four Horsemen (Rev6) of the Mini-Ice Age (the imminent Grand Solar Minimum) are almost here and people are unprepared and Lost (…my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit Jer2:11); America can be saved if You will send Your Spirit with Holy Fire now (Joel 2:28).
I have to disagree on your statement Hondo :”Those days are gone folks and they will never return.”
They will, dare I say they ARE returning, as many people, myself included, are growing food crops & and livestock, however limited that may be for some folk … especially for those like me who live within the confines of the city/suburban zone. So a trend has begun, and will expand, as more of the plebs realize the neccessity of growing, and/or raising food that one knows is not adulterated with additives and poisons ! Plus, in doing so one can receive great satifaction in learning, and doing skills that improve themselves and others … at least the others who are greatful for the bounty being shared, which in my case, means friends, family, GOOD neighbors, and occasionally, the local food bank …
I should have said ‘the occasional GOOD neighbor’ … as most are self-centered non-reciprocating treadmillers !
I don’t understand why someone can have six dogs but not six chickens or goats.
As long as Leftist Progressives control the media there will never be a return to Western cultural norms of the past. The culture Marxism coming through the media is just to powerful for most young people to resist.Most are not aware they are being programmed.
Who controls FCC licensing ? Letting the Leftist Progressives control the media is a choice, its not inevitable.
Its long past time to auction off licenses of the communist crowd over at NPR .
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is at play, essentially you can go from high order to low order, transfer of energy, but you can’t go in reverse (without additional resources).
In simple terms, you can change steak to hamburger, but you change from hamburger to steak.
I am afraid in our society, which is NOT a closed system, it does not have enough energy to reverse the loss in entropy. All that is possible is to slow down the changes in society.
at least not w/o massive coercion or a massive reawakening–
Not a perfect fit for this thread but we can shoehorn it in.
A Rasmussen poll that shows large %s of voters are aware of Antifa,and they strongly disapprove of them.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/september_2017/voters_see_antifa_protesters_chiefly_as_troublemakers
This idiocy has progressed so far now that as a rule, I, a dirt person, am automatically against anything uttered by politicians, power elite, academia & the MSM, the cloud people. I also do my darndest to shun these cretins.
Hear, here !
We have 50 years for the Government to teach two generations that it is ok to act irresponsibly. The Government subconsciously is a role model for the people. When the people see the Government is lying to itself and running endless deficits and “getting something for nothing”, the people will think that is also an acceptable norm. People think it is ok to cheat because the Government does it.
A trading society is based on trust and making someone except a thing of lower scarcity (unbacked paper money) for real goods of higher scarcity will slowly fall apart as the societal unwritten rules are broken by of all people the “role model”. The Government “cheats” by issuing un-backed money and getting scare goods/services in return.
If the Government does not consistently make tough decisions that people will not make them for there own lives either.
I liken the fact that you can not get something for nothing with the first law of thermodynamics or Newton’s first law. (action-reaction). If somebody gets something for nothing the reaction is that somebody else is paying for it.
Lowering standards is a necessary condition for replacing Whites with Turd World Trash. There is no White Trash. White people are on a higher spectrum. There are always criminals and lower breeds, but that higher scale reflects an inborn fitness not present in lower lifeforms. Are Whites inherently superior? Of course. The proof is all around you. That talk of higher IQ in Far East Asians presupposes that pure White populations actually exist, which is not the case. We are being dragged down into the mud. The Far East has an ancient culture. You can still see it because their progress has merely been taken from us and put over the stagnant society they represent. There are no dreams of the future outside of the White Western World. It all comes from US. Others can copy it, but it is not in them. The Turd World is a place where time stands still. Water seeks its own level. The dark skins are falling downward, and they will drag US down if we do not eliminate them from our midst.
A darker view of her stance, is that the Tribe is having an increasingly hard time victimizing people in the low-trust society we currently inhabit – a low trust society they created. They have figured out that they won’t do well in a society where nobody plays by the rules, rather than just them doing it.
It should be obvious to the dimmest bulb, though, that this bundle of traditional values – honesty, fidelity, thrift, temperance, punctuality, fortitude, gratitude, dedication, kindness, loyalty, et cetera – are utterly incompatible with ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity.’
If you want a 1950s society, you want 1950s demographics: a 95%+ White nation – even if you won’t or can’t admit it to yourself. Societies are a reflection of their people, not the other way around.
If they are willing to do this to Amy Wax just imagine what they are willing to do to the dirt sheople like us!
I hope it doesn’t come to a shooting war but I don’t see any other cure for the long suffering mental illness of these leftists except perhaps sudden onset, acute lead poisoning.