Category: ideological culture

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture

Pandemic Politics … or Poltroonery?

Covid, vaccine, government, mandates, freedom

Fear was a major theme — and ploy — during the pandemic. But it’s looking now like the people we have been told to rely upon for our safety are themselves moved by fear. They’re cowards, poltroons.

The Centers for Disease Control wrote an alert in the thick of 2021’s “vaccine” rollout, warning of the dangers of the Moderna and Pfizer jabs.

It was never sent out.

“In the May 25, 2021, email, exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, a CDC official revealed why some officials were against sending the alert,” explains Zachary Stieber. You see, while an alert to health care professionals using the official Health Area Network system made complete sense, one CDC official gave a clue to her colleagues’ hesitance: “people don’t want to appear alarmist,” you see.

What did we who took the jab risk? Heart inflammation, or myocarditis. The CDC knew this early on.

But did not warn us.

Now, from listening to Dr. John Campbell on YouTube and Rumble, we have learned a lot more (if not in time in 2021) about the myocarditis threat. The takers of the modRNA treatment who are most at risk are those who engage in strenuous exercise soon after inoculation (which explains why the bulk of the afflicted have been boys and young men in the prime of life). Or so I last heard. I am certainly no doctor; I merely rely upon doctors to advise me.

And those doctors, in turn, rely upon official sources of information like the CDC. 

Who did not advise them properly.

Who worry too much about “appearing alarmist” and not enough about relaying the best information.

Poltroons!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture

Milei Defends Capitalism

Argentina, Javier Milei, Capitalism, WEF

Capitalism is better than socialism.

The new libertarian president of Argentina, Javier Milei, recently explained the virtues of the free market to attendees of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Milei said that capitalism generates “an explosion of wealth,” that capitalism and the industrial revolution “lifted 90 percent of the world’s population out of poverty,” that a free market society is both practical and just.

“Far from being the cause of our problems, free enterprise capitalism as an economic system is the only tool we have to end hunger, poverty, and destitution across the planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable.”

As its answer to the practicality and justice of a capitalist social system, the left proposes the injustice of “social justice,” according to which “capitalism is bad because it is individualistic” and “collectivism is good because it is altruistic.”

Collectivism hobbles the entrepreneur and “makes it impossible for him to produce better goods and offer better services at a better price.” Which only impoverishes us. This is neither practical nor moral.

The West is in danger because it is allowing capitalism to be destroyed. We need to remember why we need it.

Will any of the dignitaries who heard Milei’s talk learn its lessons? Maybe not if they’re like WEF’s founder, Klaus Schwab, who looks at the international predations of the Chinese Communist Party and sees a “responsible, responsive” state.

But maybe a few others will. And then a few more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights ideological culture

The De-Frocking of Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson, censorship. licensing, mind control

The Canadian psychologist fighting for the right to opine without having to submit to “social media training” — reeducation — has lost a court battle.

An Ontario court has dismissed Jordan Peterson’s appeal of a decision that had ruled in favor of the autocratic College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO).

A year ago, Dr. Peterson’s livelihood was jeopardized because, on social media, he challenged “consensus” determinations on matters like climate change, sex-change operations on minors, and COVID-19 policies.

That’s when CPO, a regulatory body established by legislation, told Peterson that he must either submit to degrading “training” as the penalty for participating in public discourse or forfeit his right to practice.

With the new ruling, “There are no other legal avenues open to me now,” he says on Twitter. “It’s capitulate to the petty bureaucrats and the addlepated woke mob or lose my professional licence.”

The setback pertains only to “this round,” though. And: “There is nothing you can take from me that I’m unwilling to lose.”

In a recent National Post column, he says that he can either comply with the reeducation and confess his ideological sins or “tell my would-be masters to go directly to the hell they are so rapidly gathering around themselves and everyone else.”

If you read Dr. Peterson’s warnings to fellow Canadians about the precarious state of their liberties and interpret his tone accurately, I think you’ll agree that he’s going with the go-to-hell option.

Peterson has made millions off the fame he garnered by opposing the compelled speech aspect aspect of Canada’s Bill C-16. Thanks to the marketplace of ideas, he has more go-to-hell money than most folks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

GOP, ACLU, and NRA Together Again

ACLU, NRA, GOP, rights, free speech, self defense. 2nd Amendment, 1st Amendment

Occasionally, the stars align and adversaries become allies.

So it is that dozens of Republican congressmen have filed an amicus brief to support an NRA lawsuit against Maria Vullo, a former New York State regulator of the financial services industry. And so it is that the NRA will be represented before the Supreme Court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

After the 2018 Parkland shooting, Vullo pressured financial service companies to boycott organizations like the National Rifle Association that advocate Second Amendment rights.

The NRA sued, contending that Vullo had acted against their First Amendment rights. When the Supreme Court agreed to take their case, the NRA thought: who better to represent us before the justices than the ACLU?

The ACLU, which has not always been consistent in defending free speech, agreed.

Its national legal director, David Cole, says that “the ACLU has long stood for the proposition that we may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Although this case is also about speech, more directly it is about using governmental force to try to stop people from conducting peaceful financial transactions.

If such intimidation of financial companies — or, what is being challenged in separate litigation, of social media companies — were allowed to stand, government would be fully unleashed to threaten market actors in order to prevent constitutionally protected actions and speech that officials dislike.

Our constitutional rights made meaningless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture

Comic-Book Isms

equity, equality, communism, egalitarianism, nanny state

“This is crazy,” says Reardon Sullivan, former chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party.

He means the way Montgomery County has been selling vendor space at a comics convention, MoComCon, being held January 20. The county is charging vendors in a way that has nothing to do with what is being sold but that county officials call “inclusive” (having learned that this adjective transmutes any evil).

If you belong to a favored group, you get a special rate. Nonindigenous straight white males pay $275 per table or, with electricity, $325. But if you’re a woman or favored minority, the price per table is $225 or $250.

Sullivan says that as a black person who grew up in Montgomery County, he finds it “truly insulting to say that a seller who’s black or BIPOC is disadvantaged. All we ever want is a level playing field.” (“BIPOC” is kitchen-sink code for “black, indigenous, and people of color.”)

Sullivan has the right spirit but errs in suggesting that the only thing members of currently favored groups (“we”) want is a level playing field.

One can hope that this is true of most members of these groups.

But if white guilt or white male guilt were the only impetus propelling affirmative action and other forms of race-based or sex-based preferential treatment — if, like Sullivan, all intended beneficiaries regarded such policies as condescending, destructive lunacy — these policies would be dead and buried by now.

As they should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies regulation

Children’s Crusade Goes Forth

climate panic

In 2015, a group of young people sued the federal government.

The government’s allegedly actionable dereliction was having “known for decades that carbon dioxide pollution was causing catastrophic climate change . . . and a nation-wide transition away from fossil fuels was needed to protect plaintiff’s constitutional rights.”

The government “recklessly allowed” transport of fossil fuels, combustion of fossil fuels, etc.

I blame the lawyers more than the kids for the filing’s falsehoods and non sequiturs. Outlawing fossil fuels would be the actual catastrophe and actual reckless violation of individual and constitutional rights.

Climate variations are nothing new in the earth’s four-billion-year history. We should expect to see all the usual dry spells, hurricanes, and tornadoes that have buffeted human beings since we emerged as human beings. Fossil fuels help us to protect ourselves from these things.

Government cannot outlaw fossil fuels slowly or quickly without in effect putting a gun to the heads of everyone who wants to use a gas-fueled car, bulldozer, or airplane and saying, “You have no right to take the actions required for your survival.”

Efforts by several states and the federal government to outlaw various uses of fossil fuels are what deserve lawsuits.

Judge Ann Aiken, who recently had a chance to end this litigation but is illogically allowing it to move forward, has one thing right: “Some may balk at the Court’s approach as errant or unmeasured. . . .”

I balk. It’s errant. And over the top.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture scandal

The “Racial Animus” Gambit

race card, Harvard

Among the deflections littering former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation letter is the claim that major criticisms of her conduct are “fueled by racial animus.”

The controversies have made Gay, a black woman, very visible. She may have been subjected to racial attacks in emails or on somebody’s blog. I haven’t seen reports of such. It’s possible.

But her letter makes it seem as if she feels all of it, all the criticisms of her understanding of policies regarding the treatment of Jews on campus and criticisms of her own treatment of the words of others in her published work, were “fueled by racial animus.”

If only blacks alone were ever charged with ambiguity about antisemitism or committing plagiarism, the implication might be at least superficially plausible. 

But it’s not.

Yesterday, I discussed the considerations that properly affect campus speech policies (“The Resignation”).

Here let me note, first, that scholars of all hues and sexes have been plausibly accused of plagiarism. Example: historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, white woman. Male example: Steven Ambrose.

And, second, that Harvard’s backing and filling and own animus in response to documented charges of plagiarism have converted the matter from a problem mostly for Claudine Gay personally to a problem for Harvard as an institution. By violating its own policies for dealing with the charges and by attacking the messenger, Harvard seemed to be saying that standards of scholarship like “Don’t plagiarize” don’t matter.

But they do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Division, Exclusion, Indoctrination

college, house of cards, money

Wisconsin has decided to stop using tax dollars to subsidize ideological assaults on academic freedom.

Under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the Wisconsin legislature struck a blow against DEI domination of the state’s university system.

The acronym means “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Yet, the goal of DEI is to herd all participants in academic life into the same collectivist “antiracist,” anti-individualist straitjacket, no dissent permitted. What DEI really means, Vos says, is “division, exclusion, and indoctrination.”

The Vos-steered budget that passed in the last session eliminated $32 million from funding for the university system. It also hiked the pay of university employees and funded new campus buildings.

Using his line-item veto, the Democratic governor tried to thwart the move. But he couldn’t block the spending cut.

Then, after much negotiating, the university system agreed to freeze hiring of DEI officials, transfer DEI employees to other jobs, and implement race-blind, merit-based admissions policies.

Bullied by lefties, the board of rejects initially rejected the deal by a 9–8 vote. Vos wouldn’t budge. The board met again and accepted the deal.

As National Review’s editors put it, “when push came to shove, it wasn’t worth rejecting pay raises for all employees and putting building projects on hold for the sake of a handful of progressive ideologues.”

Until the whole house of cards collapses and there’s no longer any public funding of higher education, all states assailed by DEI should do the same kind of thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

A Great Big “Request”

Van Jones, racist, racism, replacement theory, race, immigration

“You are witnessing the rise of an American demagogue,” said Van Jones.

He was not referring to himself.

The CNN talking head was reacting to something Vivek Ramaswamy said during the last Republican presidential candidates’ forum — another one lacking the main candidate, the overwhelming favorite Donald Trump.

Van Jones, who is African-American, called Vivek, who is Indian-American, “a very, very despicable person.”

At issue is something the Republican candidate discussed: “Great Replacement Theory,” which is the notion that politicians and other insiders are using a variety of means to discourage white people from having babies while encouraging brown people to have babies . . . and for non-Europeans to come into the country both legally and illegally. The idea is that with a white minority in America, a different (or same-old/same-old?) politics will emerge (solidify). 

The theory is plenty controversial, in no small part because a few racists have listed it as an excuse to “justify” mass shootings.

But also controversial? It looks like it is more than a theory, it is a plan.

Vivek pointed this out in a tweet. He produced a video from two years ago in which Van Jones himself outlined the “theory” as a strategy: “The request from the racial justice left: we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it. That’s a tough request, and change is hard.”

Yet Jones regards this “request” as something it would be demagogic — even racist — to refuse.

Jones’s leftism does not look like “racial justice” so much as a racial vendetta.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Internet controversy social media

Die, Disney, Die!

Musk, Zombie Slayer

Disney is taking big financial losses, after a series of bombs on the silver screen and on its own channel, including a billion on last year’s four film fiascos.

Why?

The company went super-woke. And could, therefore, go broke.

Or, says Patrick Ben David, become a “zombie company,” unable to make profits, kept alive only by low interest rates and the hope that Apple will buy it.

Nevertheless, Disney joined a group of major players pulling their advertising off Twitter, er, X.

Why?

Because X’s new owner, Elon Musk, favorably forwarded a tweet about anti-white racism that was said, by many, to be antisemitic.

It’s the rage, now, not only to support Hamas’s terrorism but to excoriate Israel, Zionism, and even Jews in general, yet it was Musk’s forwarded tweet about how Jewish intellectuals and organizations too often support anti-white rhetoric that panicked the big companies, including Bob Iger-headed Disney.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, in an on-stage New York Times interview, asked Mr. Musk to respond to all this. “I hope they stop,” Musk said. “Don’t advertise.”

Musk went on: “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me, with advertising — blackmail me with money? — ‘go f**k yourself.’”

Then Musk repeated that command, using hand signals. 

“Is that clear? I hope it is.” Smiling, he added, “Hey Bob . . . if you’re in the audience.”

Mr. Sorkin pressed X’s owner on the consequences.

“What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company,” said Musk, amidst his usual stutters. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company — and we will document it in great detail.”

“But those advertisers are going to say, ‘we didn’t kill the company.’”

“Oh, yeah? Tell it to Earth.”

Musk explained that both he and the boycotters will make their cases, “and we’ll see what the outcome is.”

The idea is to take the culture war outside educational institutions, the news media, and government bodies, and to shove it into boardrooms everywhere. It’s a great game of chicken, buck buck buck. And, unlike Gale Wynand in The Fountainhead, Musk appears more than willing to lose his investment in X just to prove the point.

An interesting place we’ve come to. The insider elites, and the ideological left, seek to advance woke ideology even if it ruins their own companies, such as Disney, and squelch free speech, even if it means betraying every last principle of American liberty.

So, in this war with other people’s fortunes, take sides: die, Disney, die — before X, let’s hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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