Category: ideological culture

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Which National Church?

Finland, religious freedom

Juhana Pohjola, writes Joy Pullmann in The Federalist, may be “the first in the post-​Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years.”

While it may seem strange that Bishop Pohjola’s being prosecuted for saying Christian things — considering that he heads the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, and the Lutheran Church is the country’s state church — the truth is that Finland is majority nonbeliever, now, and the actual state religion might best be called Wokianity. 

That is why he’s being prosecuted.

And he’s not alone. 

Former Minister of the Interior and current Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen also faces charges: “The medical doctor, mother of five, and grandmother of seven is accused of having engaged in ‘hate speech’ for publicly voicing her opinion on marriage and human sexuality in a 2004 pamphlet, for comments made on a 2019 radio show, and a tweet directed at her church leadership.” 

That last is a quotation from the ADF International, which describes itself as “a faith-​based legal advocacy organization that protects fundamental freedoms and promotes the inherent dignity of all people.” The tweet quoted a Bible verse.

At issue is protecting “government-​privileged identity groups,” in this case LGBTQ folks, from “centuries-​old Christian teachings about sex” that “incite hatred.” 

A sign of the times: Finland, which used to be very liberal, is now merely “progressive” — making the assault on Christian beliefs for being un-​woke completely unsurprising.

And worth noting here in America. For this sort of attack on free speech and freedom of religion is obviously what many on the left wish to implement.

It’s Wokianity versus Christianity … those with political powerful against the most basic rights of the First Amendment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Cosmic or Merely Comic?

Jussie Smollett, woke, victim, progressivism

A number of important criminal trials are bunching up together at the moment. The Rittenhouse acquittal came first, but the Coffee and Arbery verdicts, along with it, also qualified as major milestones. Looming over our heads is perhaps the headiest of all, the Ghislaine Maxwell honey pot case. But for the wildest comedy, there’s Jussie Smollett’s.

The story is such a travesty it is hard not to laugh — especially if you have heard comedian Dave Chappelle’s bit about “the French actor, Juicy Smolliet.”

Eddie Scarry, writing in The Federalist, provides a less humorous take: “Smollett wasn’t engaging in a hoax. He was perpetuating a scam and that scam has a name. It’s called ‘social justice.’”

Scarry makes a case for Smollett’s rationality: “It’s not like Smollett is a demonstrable sociopath who told an aimless lie about being attacked by Trump supporters in 2019 for the sake of it.” When he hired two Nigerians to fake a racist, homophobic attack on him, he did so with a purpose: to parlay rampant “woke” sentiment to gain fame and fortune. “This is what our entire culture is teaching now — that the quickest way to advance is to claim victimhood on account of race, sex, or sexual identity — ideally, some combination of all three.”

While the scam element is obvious in Smollett’s greed, social justice itself is not a scam. It is an ideology of constant revolution, always to re-​make the world over to correct for cosmic injustices.

And it’s more: Social justice is open-​source psychological warfare. It doesn’t need centralized control — though it has some, in the form of the insider elitists — because its strength comes from the distributed acceptance and performances of its hapless criminal pushers.

Thankfully, comic criminality may undermine its allure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Democrats: Dissonance on Self-Defense

Kenosha, fire, Rittenhouse

The Kyle Rittenhouse case, which I talked about on my podcast, This Week in Common Sense, reveals a deep divide.

One side thinks young Mr. Rittenhouse is guilty because he clearly sided with property-​owners by cleaning up graffiti, putting out fires, caring for the riots’ victims … and carrying a big, scary-​looking rifle; the other points to the facts of the altercation between Rittenhouse and the three men he shot, judging the shootings self-defense.

On Monday, the lead prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, insisted that “You lose the right to self-​defense when you’re the one who brought the gun,” despite that not being Wisconsin law. Rittenhouse also wasn’t the only one with a gun.

While the prosecution tried to undermine self-​defense by declaring that Rittenhouse had instigated the whole scene, the media relentlessly feeds a general prejudice against the idea that citizens should be armed and for the notion that we must rely upon the police alone. 

Dissonant with this, however, were the months of leftists excusing, when not cheering, “protests” turned violent in which not only property was destroyed, but people were killed. To top off this cultural license to mayhem, progressive mavens pushed the opposite of state protection: let the mob run riot.

Followed by “defund the police.”

The leftist/​statist argument seems to be: You mustn’t protect yourself with deadly force, instead relying upon the state — except when we (the left) riot, then no protection for you!

This is a recipe for civil war or tyranny or both. 

Not civil peace.

Meanwhile, as Rittenhouse’s jury deliberates, everyone assumes that leftists itch to take an acquittal as another excuse to riot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hang Up on Corporate Racism

att&t, race, racism, skin

AT&T is one of a growing number of corporations demanding that employees become “antiracist” hair-shirt-wearers.

“Antiracist” is the now-​familiar code adjective for a racist agenda with whites as the targeted group.

What do AT&T’s “antiracist” programs inculcate? Christopher Rufo has the scoop in a post for City Journal, based on documents and testimony provided by an AT&T employee.

According to the whistleblower, managers are now assessed with respect to dedication to “diversity” and must attend training where white employees tacitly admit complicity in things like “white privilege” and “systemic racism.” The training materials aver that “American racism is a uniquely white trait” and — tiredly, vexingly, preposterously — that “Black people cannot be racist.”

AT&T employees are supposed to periodically perform an action that helps them better grasp “power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity.” Etc.

No use asking what all this has to do with improving the quality of phone calls. No use asking whether it’s kind of racist to assume that skin color determines ideas and attitudes. The reality of moral choices and the utility of common sense have nothing to do with this reeducation-​camp agenda.

What to do?

Refuse to sanction such travesties. Employees should quit en masse in protest. Granted, not everybody is in a position to just up and quit his job. But if you work for AT&T and switching to a less toxic workplace is at all possible, do so.

There’s no barbed-​wire-​topped Berlin Wall to prevent it. You can just walk away.

Or, alternatively, unite with like-​minded co-​workers and sue the pants off of the Ma Bell relic — on grounds amply allowed by “toxic work environment” and anti-discrimination laws.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights ideological culture

Bright Sheng Dimmed

Lawrence Olivier, Othello, race, censorship

Resolved: pedagogic enthusiasm plus naivety about the likely reactions of the “safe space” brigade shouldn’t be a burning-​at-​the-​stake kind of offense. 

Or any kind of firing offense.

Bright Sheng, University of Michigan professor of composition and survivor of China’s Cultural Revolution, showed his class the 1965 movie “Othello,” which stars Laurence Olivier. Olivier was in blackface. 

Sheng failed to give a trigger warning so that safe-​space aficionados could either gird their loins or skip the class.

Uh oh.

As Reason magazine’s Robby Soave notes, Olivier’s use of blackface “was controversial even at the time.”

Given the sub-​venial nature of the sin, what might any sane-​but-​offended student have done? Go up after class and say, “Gee, Professor Sheng, love your class, but shouldn’t you have made some preparatory comment about the blackface? Well, have a nice day.”

But no. It’s got to be a wailing reenactment of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, with rabid students (and others) demanding Sheng be booted. No attention to context, no proportionality, no common sense.

Sheng has offered an abject apology, saying, in part, that “time has changed, and I made a mistake in showing the film, and I am very sorry.”

Was the mob demanding his ouster appeased? No. The mob never is.

The professor has for now stopped teaching his class, and the university is “investigating.”

The investigation actually needed, alas, will not be done. What administrators must discover is a backbone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture Regulating Protest

“He’s Got a Weapon!”

trans, protest, Dave Chappelle

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.

—Voltaire

Our enemies are ridiculous. So why do they seem to be winning?

For today’s lesson, catch the pro-​trans protests outside the offices of Netflix. Trans activists and a few of Netflix’s own trans employees were protesting the occasion of the online streaming giant’s “platforming” of comedian Dave Chappelle, whose latest special, The Closer, took a few digs at the huge influence that the tiny trans “community” has on American cultural and political life. 

Chappelle referred to the way J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was treated online for defending biological women, declared himself a feminist on “Team TERF,” and talked about a trans friend of his who committed suicide after defending him online in a previous comedy special trans-fracas. 

Did Chappelle say something untrue? Unfunny? Doesn’t matter. What he said, protesters proclaimed, was hurtful.

Each of us will judge all that in our own way. But we should be able to agree on one thing: the way the small protest mob treated one counter-​protester was not truthful but very ridiculous. 

Relevant details: a man attended the event holding aloft a sign saying “We Like Dave” on the obverse and “Jokes Are Funny” on the reverse.

A protester on the trans side of the divide tore up his sign, leaving him holding the naked stick, then shouting, “He’s got a weapon!” The crowd echoed, “He’s got a weapon!”

Activists these days often say “speech is violence” and “words are weapons.” Here, they violently rob a man of his speech and declare what’s left of his attempt a literal weapon. They think they are clever. But they are merely ridiculous.

Not funny like Dave Chappelle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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