Category: ideological culture

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

BBC Apologizes, Bankers Squirm

Nigel Farage, gangsters, banksters, censorship

Banksters. It rhymes with “gangsters.”

The pejorative for bankers came to mind as I was reading about the British Broadcasting System’s public correction of a story it had published. In covering Coutts bank’s closure of Nigel Farage’s account, back on July 4, the BBC had said that it was not political.

But Mr. Farage, the former leader of the United Kingdom’s Independence Party, “later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered.”

Like we all guessed. 

The lengthy document seen by Farage and then the BBC “included minutes from a meeting in November last year reviewing his account” in which he was called “xenophobic and racist” and characterized as not the kind of customer compatible with Coutts’ “position as an inclusive organisation.”

Britain, like the United States, is in the throes of a very political “culture war.” Farage was the main proponent for Brexit in 2016. The unexpected success of Britain’s plebiscite to secede from the European Union became part of the global populist rebellion that led to the election of Donald Trump here. 

And, like here, in Britain it has gotten nasty.

Farage’s beef with the BBC was easily resolved, as Farage accepted the BBC’s apology and its reporter’s excuse that a “trusted and senior” confidential source within Coutts had fed the news organization misinformation.

The bank in question considers itself very upright and moral, apparently. Hardly a “gangster” — that’s not in its mission statement! But by taking sides in politics (apparently solidly in the Remainer rather than Brexiteer camp), the bank is following a trend we’ve seen here, where big business balks at doing business with people it doesn’t like — ideologically.

This is a recipe for the breakdown of open markets . . . and civil strife far beyond what we’ve seen so far.

That’s not good for business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Counterintuitive?

education, equality, egalitarianism

In this increasingly complex technological world, what can our school systems do to help students excel in advanced math?

Well, here’s a novel approach: “Cambridge Public Schools no longer offers advanced math in middle school,” The Boston Globe reports.

Hmmm. Rather counterintuitive: Take access away from students.

Silly me, helping students master advanced mathematics isn’t even on the list of concerns for this Massachusetts city’s “education” officialdom. “The district’s aim,” explains The Globe, “was to reduce disparities between low-income children of color, who weren’t often represented in such courses, and their more affluent peers.” 

By reducing the learning opportunities for all. 

“School districts throughout the country are moving to axe certain academic standards such as advanced courses, grades and homework in the name of equity,” The Daily Caller informs, “in California, a high school recently stopped offering honors courses because the courses were failing to enroll enough black and Latino students.”

The impetus behind these moves is racist and wrong. Moreover, the results are both predictable and pernicious: “limiting advanced math to students whose parents can afford to pay for private lessons.”

“They’re shortchanging a significant number of students,” one parent complains, “overwhelmingly students from less-resourced backgrounds, which is deeply inequitable.” This is the case because many of the more affluent parents can afford to bypass the antagonistic public schools and get their kids the education they need to succeed. 

Public schools are increasingly throwing in the towel on teaching low-income and many black and brown kids, deciding that racial “equity” can most easily be achieved by taking away educational opportunities from white and Asian students.

Is this where the logic of public education leads — race as an excuse to play Procrustes, sawing off the tops of our heads to make us “equal”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Haunted by the Specter of Mao

red guard, America, United States, antifa, revolution

“There is a whole intellectual structure, architecture, and, ultimately, strategy bound up with the idea of how to disrupt society, disrupt the West, overthrow the traditional order,” M.L.R. Smith tells Epoch Times.

According to Smith and David Jones, authors of The Strategy of Maoism in the West: Rage and the Radical Left (2022), the conduct of the America’s radical Left resembles that of the Red Guards and others during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s in China.

The authors got the idea for their study from the riots that swept the U.S. after the killing of George Floyd. These rage-filled protests-turned-riots made them think of Maoism:

  • Defacing and toppling of monuments, reminders of the pesky past.
  • Shouting down and “cancelling” speakers. (Sometimes physically as well as verbally assaulting them.)
  • Abject kneeling and self-criticism in response to alleged wrongdoing, including “‘white guilt’ genuflection.”

The parallels are real, even though the scale of the humiliations and destruction that we have seen is nowhere near that of the Cultural Revolution, when millions were tortured and murdered. 

Jones says Maoism was bred in China and hothoused in Paris but “achieved its global appeal in the Ivy League schools of the United States,” where it is manifest in thinking about race and gender.

The authors explore the nature of rage as a motivating force and strategy, “an energy to be harnessed as a mode of power.” This is the fuel of many a revolution, where mob action serves as a kind of open terrorism. Histories and treatises are filled with it.

America’s Founding Fathers feared such rage, hence in their revolution they stated principles in elegant but clear sentences. They expected argument and readily engaged.

But now?You can’t reason with rage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Bless You, John Kerry

John Kerry, climate change, global warming

It is hard to find the words. 

Having just finished wringing out a soaked handkerchief, soggy with tears of gratitude for your recent act of high nobility and raw courage in defying the worst aspects of current U.S. policy and your own dismal and dismaying track record of silly pronouncements as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, an actual title I might add, I wanted to take a moment to say Thank You.

Thank you, sir, thanks for declining to again deploy your eloquence, charisma, and illogic in the service of the same old dreary nonsense.

For when asked during a recent congressional hearing whether the United States would be contributing to a fund to pay “climate reparations” to countries harmed by extreme manifestations of weather, aka “climate-driven” natural disasters, you said, flatly, “No, under no circumstances.”

Wha . . . ? Was this the same man who likened the fight against “climate change” to the fight against the Nazis in World War II?

I mean, I’ll believe it when I don’t see it, but for now I just want to say: Wow! 

Especially since last year’s Conference of the Parties, COP27, billed as “a defining moment in the fight against climate change,” where the United States did express support for such payments.

So the U.S. will not, after all, be using taxpayer money to appease other countries for also experiencing weather. Great news. For every minute it lasts, I really appreciate it. 

I am veritably dripping with . . . gratitude.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

The Bigger Boycott Before Bud Light

Bud Light, boycott, woke, wokism

It’s bigger than the beer.

“Bud Light’s business has collapsed since April,” explains sports commentator Clay Travis in a recent column for Fox News, “plummeting 30% in consumption, the result of the company putting a trans influencer on a can to celebrate the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament.” 

Travis calls it “the most crushing boycott of a large consumer product brand in modern history,” adding that Bud Light “might be finished as a popular beer.”

However, Travis also rebutted “many in the media” for “proclaiming Bud Light as a unicorn, the first of its kind conservative boycott that has obliterated decades of goodwill for a company.”

Not true, he argues: “The most consequential consumer boycott of the 21st century didn’t come from drinkers’ rejection of a beer, it came from sports, in particular the NBA, which has destroyed its brand with a large percentage of the American sporting public by embracing woke, political, far-left-wing messaging in its games.”

Travis informs that, since the 1998 NBA Finals, when superstar Michael Jordan sank a late jumper to win, there has been a 75 percent drop in viewership of the National Basketball Association’s championship. “Indeed,” he offers, “four of the five lowest-rated NBA Finals of the past 30 years have occurred in the past four years.”

Count me as one data point: I watched that great 1998 NBA Final and yet, today, I do not tune in. Why? I disagree with the NBA’s political bent and its repellent propaganda.

“More people were interested in watching” the Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship “in 2023,” reports Travis, “than the NBA Finals in 2020 and 2021.” (I saw that women’s championship game and declined both NBA Finals.)

But . . . why has the NBA’s nosedive in popularity not been news until now?

Mr. Travis says it’s because “the media loves the NBA embracing woke politics” and, therefore, “refused to share the data right in front of their eyes.”

Another case of so-called journalists deciding they like their readers and viewers less informed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Bud Lite, basketball, woke, wokeism

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

Two Days & 50 Years

American Independence, July 4, July 2, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson

Tomorrow is Independence Day in these United States.

But so was yesterday.

It was in the papers:

This day the Continental Congress declared the United Colonies Free and Independent States.

Pennsylvania Evening Post, July 2, 1776.

For it was two days before revising and accepting Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence that Congress officially declared its independence from King George III.

This Common Sense site has explained this quirk of history before. The Lee Resolution of July 2 declared that

  • the colonies should be “free and independent States”
  • they were “absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown” and that the connections should be “totally dissolved”
  • New “foreign Alliances” should be formed
  • And a “plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.”

Congress also commanded that a declaration be drawn up, and it was done quickly, accepted two days later.

The confederation document, on the other hand, took another year to work up, and four years beyond that to adopt.

John Adams, for all his faults as the Second President under the later U.S. Constitution, was a true friend of liberty and regarded the day as historic. “The second day of July, 1776,” he prophesied, writing to his wife on July 3, 1776,

will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

He was off by two days. It was the Fourth that would be celebrated.

Fifty years later he was off by much less: he died on July 4, 1826, uttering “Thomas — Jefferson — still surv —”

Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies

Affirmative Action Disaffirmed

affirmative action, quotas, college, race, racism

Congratulations to WHITE
SUPREMACY for winning
a huge victory today.

Thus tweeted Gene Wu, District 137’s representative to the Texas legislature. 

That was his reaction to yesterday’sSupreme Court decision striking down racial discrimination in picking students for colleges and universities.

He’s a Democrat and in a tricky situation. The case was brought to the High Court by Asian Americans, who have been most discriminated against in college placement. Rep. Wu, himself Asian American, talks up the compensatory racial preference cause. 

“Asian Americans have consistently been used as a foil to eliminate Affirmative Action programs which serve to repair centuries of intentional discrimination against Black and Latino AND Asian communities,” he argues. “Having Asian Americans as parties doesn’t make it any less racist.”

Actually, of course, discriminating in favor of “Black and Latino” applicants has hurt Asian Americans’ college placements the most, and provably so. Racial discrimination was the criterion. Not academic achievement, IQ, or ability to pay. Asian Americans were the big losers. 

More than whites.

But all Rep. Wu can think about is WHITE SUPREMACY. In all-caps, no less.

He worries not one whit about racial discrimination against Asians!

As absurd as what we used to call “reverse” discrimination is, we can be sure that, after this current ruling, DEI-obsessed administrators will still seek ways to continue their discrimination on the basis of race.

Also being raised? The issue of legacy admissions, rewarding with preferential treatment applicants whose parents and grandparents previously attended the institution. Senator and GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott called for public universities to nix those policies as well. Scott was joined by President Biden and AOC.

Sounds like justice and fairness based on merit is on a roll.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture Internet controversy social media

Google Can’t Have That

censorship

Over the last several years, one has put one’s YouTube speech at risk by addressing such verboten or intermittently suppressed topics as pandemic policy, vaccine efficacy, origin of the COVID-19 virus, “climate change” (are winter, summer, and all natural disasters really caused by carbon footprints? inquiring minds want to know!), 2020 election fraud, and whatever else inspires post-Enlightenment institutional censors to clatter into action.

Because of the emails and other documents that have come to light in various lawsuits, we now know for sure that social-media companies have not been censoring independently. 

They’ve been in cahoots with government agencies — agencies eager to find corporate workarounds to the First Amendment.

A recent target of Google’s YouTube? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Running for president as a Democrat in competition with the alleged incumbent, Joe Biden, this son of assassinated 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy is disturbing the serene pools of so-called thought that constitute Acceptable Opinion and Settled Science.

I often disagree with Kennedy. But I feel that he isn’t just feeding me B.S.; he actually believes stuff. 

He may be mostly wrong, but I prefer that to mostly crooked.

Google has just deleted another Kennedy video, one in which he converses with Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson about climate change, COVID-19, and a possible link between exposure to chemicals and sexual dysphoria.

This last musing seems dubious. But, whatever, let the guy talk. Except — hold on — isn’t RFK Jr. causing Joe Biden a lot of political trouble?

Can’t have that. 

Or, anyway, Google can’t have that. 

Or whichever Biden administration officials are directing Google (or vice versa) can’t have that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

Freedom Festival

https://thisiscommonsense.org/pdf/CS5994.pdf

“Should white people celebrate Juneteenth?” National Public Radio’s Destinee Adams asked last year at this time, before advising, “Just don’t interrupt Black folks who are just trying to have a great time.”

I like to see folks have a good time.

“Each year,” offers The Wayside Youth & Family Support Network in Massachusetts, “Juneteenth is a day for Black people to celebrate freedom.”

The article sports the headline, “10 Things We Want White People to Do to Celebrate Juneteenth.”

Sounds like there’s a test. 

In “The Caucasians’ Guide to Celebrating Juneteenth,” The Root claims, “we created a CRT-free educational curriculum to help colonizer Americans resist the urge to gentrify this celebration.”

“Hold up, white people,” urges The Root’s Michael Harriot. “Before hopping on the Juneteenth bandwagon, you first need to realize that you have no say in driving the narrative about this special day.”

Thank goodness I have my own commentary program. 

Juneteenth celebrates enslaved people in Texas being freed on June 19, 1865 — the very last in our country to be held in bondage. Now that’s cause for jubilation for every man and woman who breathes free . . . of every race.

How was that “peculiar,” perniciously evil institution of slavery stopped? To put slavery in its grave, more than 360,000 American men “gave the last full measure of devotion,” as Abe Lincoln put it, to the “cause.” 

These men, mostly white but of both races, deserve a moment on Juneteenth.

So do the abolitionists from Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison to John Brown and Harriett Tubman . . . and all those (white and black) who risked so much to run the Underground Railroad. And eternal thanks to the white juries who voted to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act, refusing to send slaves back. 

Slavery is forever deserving of condemnation, certainly. But Juneteenth isn’t about slavery; it’s about emancipation, the triumph of freedom.

At my shindig, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

After Anarchy, Sue!

Seattle, BLM, protests

In 2020, in Seattle, Washington, “anarchists” took over a section of the Capitol Hill district and set up their own ersatz government, first called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and then, confusingly, Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). At the crime scene, which went on for weeks during what Seattle’s mayor called “The Summer of Love,” the anarchistic element was always a bit hard to figure, but the Black Lives Matter (BLM) presence stuck in memory. 

Now it’s routinely considered a BLM event.

What it accomplished was a lot of violence and property loss. So Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, a shop in the center of the 10-block CHAZ/CHOP territory, is suing.

Not Black Lives Matter.

Which the owner, Molly Moon Neitzel, takes pains to say she still supports: “At Molly Moon’s we hold race equity at the top of our list of our priorities for how we want to make the world better. Black Lives Matter. The lawsuit filed on Wednesday, June 7 is not meant to undermine that important message,” Ms. Neitzel explained. 

She’s also not suing the individuals who organized and engaged in the insurrection/conquest, especially the 30 or so “protesters” eventually arrested.

The target? The City of Seattle.

Molly Moon demands compensation for revenue losses, of course, and the “team morale impacts we experienced during and for many months after CHOP caused by the City of Seattle’s decision to affirmatively create and assist the CHOP occupation of Capitol Hill, to abandon the police precinct and to stop responding to public safety needs in our beloved Capitol Hill community.”

In short: Blame the government for not protecting you from the criminals you support!

One might laugh were it not for all the violence that this very attitude excuses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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