Category: ideological culture

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folly general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Seppuku for Dutch Farmers?

farmer protest, Dutch, Netherlands, global warming, climate change

Two years ago, the Netherlands government was spending millions of euros to subsidize farmers and others hurt by pandemic policies.

Now it seeks to destroy many Dutch farmers by compelling them to drastically slash livestock herds to reduce nitrogen oxide and ammonia, thereby supposedly benefiting the environment. The government has also thwarted construction projects on save-​the-​planet grounds.

Farmers are protesting throughout the country. At one site, police opened fire. No one was hurt.

The prime minister objects to “intimidating” officials by, say, clogging highways with tractors — which protesting farmers have done.

Understandable, but shoe the other foot: Is using governmental coercion to destroy farmers a form of peaceful suasion?

Such irrational policies conform to ideologies that sure seem bent on the progressive destruction of civilization for the alleged sake of fine-​tuning the weather. Yet nothing the Dutch could do — not even mass seppuku — would appreciably affect our far-​more-​massive-​than-​the-​Netherlands global climate. But the government may succeed in making life harder for everyone in the habit of eating.

Just some overseas craziness that could never happen here?

It already is. Federal assaults on the oil industry have fueled skyrocketing fuel prices. Our current president says the burden is an acceptable part of “an incredible transition” to a world that will be “stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”

Will the U.S. government next decide that too many cows are emitting gases such as methane and mandate culling of herds here?

Who knows? It depends on the politics of the moment, how eager officials are to appease enemies of mankind, and other factors having nothing to do with respecting the requirements of human survival.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

‘Ideological Prejudices’

Xi, China, communism, foreign policy

“‘One country two systems’ has been tested and proved time and again,” Chinese ruler Xi Jinping told his hand-​picked Hong Kong audience last week, “and there is no reason to change such a good system.”

Twenty-​five years into that “good system” — created when the United Kingdom signed it over to the Chinese Communist Party with the proviso it would recognize basic civil liberties in Hong Kong until 2047 — Xi was taking a victory lap. 

He had successfully squelched freedom of speech and of the press.

“China’s government is,” Ian Easton writes in The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy, “far more powerful and sophisticated than any that came before. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Russia all pale in comparison.”

Easton, who studies defense and security issues involving the U.S., China, Japan, and Taiwan at the Project 2049 Institute, also pointedly suggests that it is “of national importance that Hollywood begins to make movies about China that are not censored.”

Censored by Beijing, he means. 

China’s long list of tyrannies has gotten so bad that even NATO — yes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — has recognized the threat posed by the totalitarian country engaged in the largest military build-​up in human history. 

“NATO has listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time,” Al Jazeera reported weeks ago, “saying Beijing’s ambitions and its ‘coercive policies’ challenge the Western bloc’s ‘interests, security and values.’”

To which the Chinese objected, arguing the NATO statement “vilifies China’s foreign policy” and “China’s natural military development” and was “filled with … ideological prejudices.”

They have a point. It’s about time the West shows a bit of “bias” against totalitarianism and genocide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture

Go Slow?

racism, Stepin Fechit

Somewhere along the line putative anti-​racists forgot what racism is.

“In an email obtained by Reason,” writes Robby Soave at, yes, Reason magazine, “Regional Health Equity Coalition Program Manager Danielle Droppers informed the community that a scheduled conversation between OHA officials and relevant members of the public would not take place as planned.”

And she offered an … interesting … excuse.

“We recognize that urgency is a white supremacy value that can get in the way of more intentional and thoughtful work, and we want to attend to this dynamic. Therefore, we will reach out at a later date to reschedule.”

While it is obvious that Ms. Droppers does not like what she calls “white supremacy,” her blithe acceptance of the notion that punctuality is a racial characteristic is rather bracing.

Referring to blacks as, generally, slow and even lazy was once a common white-​racist evaluation of African Americans.

So common, in fact, that it was a joke — one constantly referenced “as a trope” by Steppin Fetchit and other actors as they portrayed the languorous and servile blacks laughed at in a now bygone era.

Then, as now, there were blacks more than capable of speed and competence in matters where time was of the essence, who valued a “sense of urgency.” 

To now accept the stereotype as reason enough to extol loose scheduling is … almost … funny. 

If not so disturbingly stupid and racist.

Robby Soave briefly touches on the intellectual movement that does this sort of thing consistently. We can thank, it turns out, white anti-​racists.

Who are quickly establishing a new stereotype: that white anti-​racists are hopelessly witless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Target: Government Schools

US flag, Christianity, secularism, education

Former Attorney General William Barr gave a rather stark appraisal of the current politico-​cultural moment, last Saturday.

Speaking at a Christian conference in Chicago, Bill Barr said that our “whole civilization” is “under sustained attack by increasingly secular forces.”

Certainly, the western tradition in which we live is “Judeo-​Christian,” yet the explicitly religious aspect of our civilization is openly mocked and undermined by major progressive institutions. But is the civilization itself under attack?

Well, if you lean left you might say No. 

To others, the “woke” mob that dominatesso many major organizations in America is foursquare against freedom of speech and religion, and by demanding ideological conformity on a number of issues like sexual identity and racial “equity,” seems determined to re-​make society from the ground up, and have that work done under mob violence threat as well as corporate compliance and state command.

But especially interesting is what Barr said was the foundation for today’s secular revolutionaries: the public schools. 

“The variety of American beliefs now makes a monopoly on education untenable,” Barr argued, as quoted by The Federalist. “You can’t finesse it anymore. You can’t pretend what’s being taught in schools is compatible with traditional religion, nor can you pretend schools are neutral any more.”

This radical a critique of government schooling is something I used to hear only from libertarians. Barr’s advocacy of school choice is not as cautious as Republicans would advance decades ago. His is an attack on government-​run schools as such: the constitutional and existential crisis in American education requires,Barr said, a direct attack upon the government monopoly over the provision of education.

The culture war just ramped up a notch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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ideological culture

Not Tired of Winning

Paul Clement, 2nd Amendment, guns, law

The title of a Wall Street Journal op-​ed by lawyers Paul Clement and Erin Murphy, “The Law Firm That Got Tired of Winning,” is not strictly accurate.

As reported there and in an accompanying Journal editorial (“You Won Your Gun Case. You’re Fired”), the law firm Kirkland & Ellis did tell Clement and Murphy to quit their Second Amendment clients or quit the firm. But not because it was pushed past the edge of exhaustion when these attorneys won a major U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the Second Amendment right to carry a concealed firearm.

Of course, the op-​ed title is ironic.

We all know that it’s the terror of the vituperative left that’s got Kirkland & Ellis suddenly gun-​rights-​shy and welshing on a prior agreement. In 2016, when the firm recruited Clement, he required as a term of employment that he be able to retain clients involved in Second Amendment litigation.

Clement and Murphy write that it is no novelty for lawyers to represent controversial clients and no virtue to abandon them for light and transient causes. Moreover, the Constitution “isn’t self-​executing”; it depends on lawyers willing to take on controversial cases and judges willing to hear the best arguments for both sides.

So, rather than abandon clients of long standing, they’ve left Kirkland & Ellis.

Kirkland & Ellis has every right to run its affairs this way. But prospective clients should think thrice before entrusting their fate to such a firm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Pushing Past Protest

Jane's Revenge, abortion, Supreme Court

A group called Jane’s Revenge is on a rampage against organizations known to oppose abortion.

“We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures,” the manifesto declares. “Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti. From here forward, any anti-​choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season.”

We don’t know how Jane’s Revenge is constituted. Maybe it will turn out to be just one woman with a keyboard. Whatever its form, though, it has acolytes, persons willing to damage the property of churches, anti-​abortion pregnancy centers, and other anti-​abortion organizations.

Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for vandalizing the Agape Pregnancy Center in Des Moines this month. In Olympia, St. Michael Parish was spray-​painted with the words “abort the church.” Dozens of similar incidents began in early May, when Wisconsin Family Action was damaged by arson and vandalism. (Family Research Center maintains a list of the attacks; Wikipedia curates a page about those attributed specifically to Jane’s Revenge.)

The Biden administration has finally made a pro forma objection to the violence being perpetrated by pro-​abortion protesters. Too often, though, government officials and others have been conspicuously silent. Could it possibly be the case that they’re OK with violence as a means because they agree about abortion as an end?

This is tantamount to encouraging violence by the angry left — and not just when it comes to this particular controversial issue.

Thankfully, though there have been protests nationwide against the Supreme Court’s overthrowal, last week, of Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), there has so far been no “Night of Rage.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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