Tag: progs

Via Cold Fury

Steyn hit on a topic very near to my own heart with that opening line.

One of the occupational hazards of the commentative biz is that what’s new – the daily news item – simply illustrates the same old thesis you’ve been hammering for years, so that life’s rich pageant comes to seem like a Broadway catalogue song, a great torrent of accumulation all making the ever wearier point – that “You’re the Top”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “These Foolish Things remind me of you”. Or in our case: We’re the Pits, The Lady is a Transitioning Gentleman, and These Foolish Things remind me that our civilization’s on the express chute to oblivion.

Here, by way of example, are a couple of stories readers asked for my thoughts on in the last 24 hours:

Richard Dawkins has become the latest speaker to be prevented from speaking at Berkeley. Professor Dawkins is a world-famous scientist, whose book The Selfish Gene has just been voted “the most inspiring science book of all time” in a poll commissioned by the Royal Society.

His science is not the problem. Dawkins is also an atheist.

That’s not the problem, either – or it wasn’t when he was principally urinating over the Pope (“a leering old villain in a frock”) and the Catholic Church (an “evil corrupt institution” that’s also a “child-raping institution”). All three quotes are from just one Washington Post column: that’s how respectable and mainstream Dawkins was back then in 2010.

Alas, Dawkins is an equal-opportunity atheist, and feels just as unkindly toward Islam. Hence the announcement from the “liberal” sponsor of his Berkeley talk, KPFA Radio:

Dear Richard Dawkins event ticket buyers,

We regret to inform you that KPFA has canceled our event with Richard Dawkins. We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.

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KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier. We also apologize to all those inconvenienced by this cancellation. Your ticket purchases will automatically be refunded by Brown Paper Tickets.

Sincerely,
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM

It would have to be “sincere”, wouldn’t it? Because it’s hard to see how apparently sentient beings could otherwise write such effete desiccated tripe. Notice how the shriveling of free expression smoothly proceeds to the next diminished staging post: Once upon a time, Berkeley professed to believe in free speech. Then it believed in free speech except for “hate speech”. Now it supports “serious” free speech, but not “hurtful” speech.

Well, we live in a world of hurt. Personally, I’m hurt by people who say they don’t like my cat album, or by the director’s decision to give me purple hair in this video. But what’s really hurtful is that KPFA and Berkeley can’t even be bothered to pretend to a principled defense of free speech. What is “serious” free speech? Not so long ago, arguments for same-sex marriage or tampons for menstruating men would have been dismissed as utterly unserious – indeed, preposterous. What KPFA means by “serious” speech is compliant, conformist speech that brooks no ideological dissent from the pieties of the day – on male menstruation, climate change, Islam, and whatever’s next on the list. You can be as “hurtful” as you like to cardinals but not imams, to climate deniers but not climate alarmists, to homophobic pastry chefs but not to gay newlyweds.

Its “emphatic support” of “serious free speech” is, thus, merely a regime of apostasy enforcement – which is why it has no place for an atheist such as Dawkins.

Continue reading ““As I’ve said before, I’ve said it before””

Guest Post by The Zman

Long ago, it became clear that genetics was going to upend all of the Progressive assertions about human nature. In fact, it was going to challenge the core of Western Liberalism. It’s a little hard to hold onto the idea that “All men are created equal” when you no longer believe in God and science says some men are more equal than others. It’s impossible to maintain the universalism that is the foundation stone of the prevailing orthodoxy, when group differences are clearly rooted in genetics and evolution.

Continue reading “The Torquemadas”

Guest Post by The Zman

Maybe it has always been true, but it seems like we live in an age of esoteric language or pseudo-language. Everyone is familiar with the gag of using “undocumented worker” in place of “illegal alien.”  Janitors became sanitation engineers and teachers are now educators. It’s a part of how the American Left makes war on our civilization. By destroying the language they destroy the truth. If words no longer have common and concise meanings, then there is no truth, only force.

Continue reading “Devil’s Dictionary”

Guest Post by The Zman

One of the weirder aspects of the Cult of Modern Liberalism is the mysticism that underlies so much of it. It’s subtle, but pervasive. You see it here in this bizarre op-ed written by the president of the University of Maryland.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, May 20, a young man was murdered on the University of Maryland College Park campus, a senseless and unprovoked act. Richard Collins III, a student at Bowie State University, had just been commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army and was within days of his graduation. A promising life was ended all too soon, leaving families and communities to mourn.

The suspect is a UMD student. The state’s attorney of Prince George’s County is overseeing the investigation and prosecution of the suspect, supported by the county police, the UMD Police Department and the FBI. They will examine whether racial hatred was a motive, given the suspect’s association with an online white supremacist group; the victim was black.

National polls show that most Americans believe that expressions of hate are increasing and going mainstream. Sadly, such incidents have affected our campus before.

Continue reading “Prog Kabbalah”

Guest Post by The Zman

The title for this post is a quote often attributed to Leonid Brezhnev or sometimes to Stalin, but like many pithy quotes, its origins are unknown. It was most likely a quick shorthand for the view of the Soviets, during the Brezhnev era, that their sacrifices in the war entitled them to hold the satellite countries of Eastern Europe. The rhetoric of the Soviets, particularly with regards to the third world, could never be squared with the fact that they held a sizable chunk of Europe captive, but they somehow found a way to justify it.

It is also a useful way of understanding the psychology of Progressive groups. They operate a lot like car thieves in the ghetto. A guy boosts a car and immediately buys an air freshener for it, puts some of his clothes in the backseat and always, always litters it with some of his mail. Anyone who has repossessed cars knows this, which is why it is such a great line in this movie. At some level, the thief knows it is not his car, but he makes it his car in the same way a dog marks his territory. It’s his as long as it has his stuff in it.

Continue reading “What We Have, We Hold”