Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture too much government

Too Big for the Hermit Kingdom

Kim Jong Un, North Korea, women

North Koreans endure one of the least fun-loving, most sensuality-repressing regimes on the planet.

Normally, government officials in the Hermit Kingdom strictly enforce all manner of regimentation and self-deprivation, at least for those being ruled. If you’re a happy citizen in North Korea, check the map. You are not in North Korea.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel, though. Kim Jong-un’s administration has put out an all-points edict, also all-areolas, ordering North Koreans to be on the lookout for women with un-socialist breasts. 

The precipitant is an “ongoing show trial of two women in their 20s accused of undergoing breast enhancement operations by a backstreet surgeon.”

As you know, every socialist breast is the product of the forces of dialectical materialism, in consequence of which such bosoms, albeit firm and loyal to the supreme leader, are often Marxist-Leninist to a fault. Normally, then, we expect collectivist cleavage to be immune to capitalist leering as well as any other such “rotten capitalist act.”

Now, however, North Korea has turned a corner in its attitude toward mammary glands. Everyone is being ordered to stare at women well below eye level, especially any that might have benefited from augmentation in violation of Das Kapital.

While this new all-eyes alert may sound like a recreational activity for most men, it won’t be fun for the women who get dragged off to hospitals to be medically examined to determine whether their breasts are entirely for real or have been corrupted by “bourgeois customs.” 

But North Korea isn’t supposed to be fun.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

Mostly Democratic

Michigan, illegal immigrants, voting, democracy, violence

An email from Voters Not Politicians (VNP) predicts that if a certain popular ballot measure gets enough signatures “it’s likely to pass.”

Great! Wonderful to see democracy in action, eh?

Not so much for this leftwing political action committee, however. “We have to keep this proposal off of Michigan’s ballot in 2026,” the email went on.

The initiative petition in question is Michigan’s Citizen Only Voting Amendment, which (1) clearly establishes that “only” U.S. citizens are eligible voters in all state and local elections, (2) mandates that the Secretary of State check the voter rolls for citizenship status, and (3) requires photo ID to vote. 

Polls have shown upwards of 80 percent of Michigan voters support the measure. Perhaps spurred on by the noncitizens who were shown to have voted unimpeded in last November’s presidential election.

How will VNP honchos accomplish their mission of suppressing a petition for a public vote on this ballot initiative? They urge folks to “learn how to peacefully disrupt circulation.” 

“Disrupt”? That doesn’t quite go with “peacefully.” 

Last month, Charlie Kirk was assassinated speaking on a college campus. According to a recent poll,* the percentage of Democrats who believe “Americans may have to resort to violence” to achieve political goals has doubled this year. Back in April, a survey found that a majority of self-identified “left-of-center” respondents agreed it was “somewhat justified to murder President Trump.” The same survey found that 15 percent found it “completely justified.”

Destroy democracy to save it? 

As chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting: We won’t let you. Stop trying to block us and others from speaking. Instead, speak out against our measure to your heart’s content. 

I also suggest looking for a rallying slogan that fits better with “peacefully.” 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* From 12 percent of Democrats saying so in May of 2024 to 28 percent this year. The percentage of Republicans believing violence may become necessary is higher still — 29 percent in 2024 and 31 percent in 2025. A whopping 77 percent of the public cited political violence as “a major concern.”

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Immoderate Bullets

Jay Jones, text message

“What began as a quiet October Friday in Virginia politics,” reports Markus Schmidt for the Virginia Mercury, “erupted into a full-blown national scandal when screenshots of private, three-year old text messages showing Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones fantasizing about shooting then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert and his children were made public.”

With 280,000 people having already voted in Virginia’s race for attorney general, polls show Jones leading.

“Like all people,” Jones excused himself, “I’ve sent text messages that I regret.”

Have all of us sent texts such as these? 

“If those guys die before me,” Jones messaged Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.”

Jones, who had resigned as a state legislator, was incensed that Speaker Gilbert had offered too strong a public eulogy over the death of a retired Democratic delegate. Apparently, that delegate had committed the unforgivable sin of being a moderate.

Jones boasted that if he had Hitler, Pol Pot and the Virginia House Speaker in a room, and only two bullets, Speaker “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”

In one message, Del. Coyner “chastised Jones” for telling her over the phone how he hoped “Jennifer Gilbert’s children would die” in her arms to make the Speaker change his political views.

“Rather than deny that he had wished death on the children,” National Review explained, “Jones responded by saying, ‘Yes, I’ve told you this before. Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.’”

“I mean do I think Todd and Jennifer are evil? And that they’re breeding little fascists?” he asked in another text. 

To which he answered: “Yes.”

Jay Jones for attorney general? No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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budgets & spending cuts ideological culture national politics & policies

Pleistocene Politics

socialism, resolve, soldiers, America, freedom

Back in the Eocene — I mean the 1990s — Senator Chuck Schumer and President Bill Clinton and most other Democrats insisted that “healthcare” benefits not be distributed to “those who’ve entered the country illegally.” Now, the party is united behind the opposite notion, in which benefits — paid for by resident taxpayers — must be delivered generously to all comers. 

This was most clearly demonstrated in 2019, during one of those huge panels of presidential hopefuls on the Democratic side, all raising their hands on whether they supported giving tax-funded medical assistance to illegal aliens. 

Yesterday I quoted Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) on how Democrats want to “save people.” 

What I didn’t quote was the question she was asked — “Do Democrats want to prioritize the healthcare for illegal aliens over a government shutdown?” — or how she initially responded: “Excuse me; stop it right there. We’re not prioritizing; what we’re doing is saying, simply, we wanna keep the government open and we wanna work with the Republicans and have a bipartisan agreement to keep this government open and healthcare is at the top of our agenda.”

Whew. While denying she’s prioritizing what’s at “the top” of her “agenda” — what prioritization means — her desire for a “bipartisan agreement” is just as fake, for what she and her fellow Democrats demand is that the Republicans completely agree with their most extreme agendum: subsidized medical assistance for all comers.

 That’s not “bipartisan.” There’s no compromise. It’s a tactic of intransigence.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this in terms of an “intransigent minority rule,” positing that in complex systems — such as societies, markets, or Congress — a small, highly committed minority (as little as 3-4 percent) can impose its preferences on a flexible majority due to an asymmetry of choice.

Meaning that the opponents of “limitless” subsidies (socialism) must become intransigent themselves to win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights government transparency ideological culture social media

Google Confesses All

Google, Youtube, censorship, free speech, Covid, 2020 election, fraud

Google is no longer silent about whether the Biden administration pushed Google to censor customers for their viewpoints. 

Under Biden, Google censored YouTube content creators under federal pressure, specifically about COVID-19. But Google did muzzle discourse on other matters, such as disputes about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as a result of its own policies that it now says are “sunsetted” along with policies resulting from its submission to a rogue administration.

Its own role is important because we know that a tech giant can effectively resist federal pressure to censor on the basis of the principles of the company’s leaders.

The proof is how Twitter changed course while Biden or his autopen was still the president. Twitter revamped its policies after Elon Musk ascended to the helm, starting to welcome back those who had been censored under the previous owners.

Yes, Elon Musk found himself under assault from every direction from a variety of federal agencies; which, it seemed, were acting as if in concert with and at the behest of a foiled Biden administration. Musk’s opposition to censorship and documentation of administration pressure to censor was not risk-free.

Now Google is following suit. When restoring freedom of speech is lots less risky.

Let’s hope Google’s words now decrying censorship, and its still-in-progress efforts to make things right — inviting the return of former YouTubers whose channels it had censored, for example — will render the company less eager to cooperate when the next pro-censorship administration takes power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people regulation

Cancel Kimmel Culture

Reverse cancel culture is here, so to speak.

For years, leftists hounded any and all offenders against politicalcorrectness — meaning they’d root out anyone they disagreed with, including for saying anodyne things like “women are adult female humans and men are adult male humans” — directing hysterical online mobs against offenders’ employers, advertisers, and even ISPs.

Now it appears rightists are doing the same. People have lost their jobs for saying horrific — tasteless, hateful — things regarding the killing of Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel just lost his high-profile late-night “comedy show” with ABC.

He’s literally been cancelled.

What happened? The Sinclair and Nexstar affiliate groups announced they will not (barring some apology) air Kimmel’s show anymore, and the two, together, own over 70 ABC affiliates — suggesting a substantial hit to the network’s bottom line.

“‘Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,’ a spokesperson for the Disney-owned network said in a statement,” reports the BBC. 

The offense? “In his Monday night monologue, Kimmel said: ‘The Maga Gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.’”

One could nitpick. 

It has, after all, been embarrassing to watch the anti-MAGA folks desperately try to pin the accused shooter’s motive on some bizarre theory about “groyper” culture and “furry” larping; truth is, after an obviously political assassination, nearly everyone will aim to “score political points.” Kimmel one-sidedly points only to his opponents.

Missing in the back-and-forth? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcast TV in the first place. 

The FCC actually has a case that what Kimmel said was offensive and not “in the public interest.” But why should that count for anything? Were the broadcast spectrum privately owned — slots sold to the highest bidder, getting government out of any regulatory role whatsoever over media outlets — then, maybe, ABC wouldstand by its divisive host to satisfy only their core audience of partisan MAGA-haters.

And keep losing money . . . as is its right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Timothy Tendentious

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine — most noted, till now, for being the first Timothy to run for the U.S. vice presidency — said something interesting last week.

And that may indeed be a significant first.

Sen. Kaine expressed his shock at something said by Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Mr. Barnes had confessed to the belief that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our Creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”

Horrifying!

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator,” said the Virginia senator, aghast, “that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shi’a law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities. . . .”

Our First Failed Tim* is trying to advance an argument: the Iranians, believing “that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator” do bad things, so the idea must be wrong.

Presumably, however, Tim Kaine would not argue that Thomas Jefferson, when he wrote the famous words “We hold these truths to be self‑evident, that all Men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” was hell-bent on persecuting religious minorities. The senator surely knows that Jefferson was a daring proponent of religious freedom. 

Generally, the idea of natural rights was used in the West to extend religious freedom.

Kaine must also know that folks like him who hold to legal positivism — thinking that rights only come from governments — include some of the worst persecutors of religious people in human history.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Our Second Failed Tim is of course Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who unsuccessfully ran alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. 

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ideological culture media and media people social media

Horrors Made Visible

Nearly all major Democratic elected officials publicly expressed their sorrow over the death of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Wednesday. They condemned the shooting and declared that political violence has no place in a democracy.

But to anyone who’s looked online at the cruel comments, jubilation, and sick jokes about the murder and about Mr. Kirk, the idea that Democrats are of one mind about the corrosiveness and injustice of killing ideological opponents just because you disagree with them falls to pieces. One popular thread included jokes of the sound the victim made after being shot in the neck, a lot of talk about Kirk’s gun control opposition (and the “irony” of him being shot), and the like — but when I went back to look, the posts had been taken down.

Thankfully (?), the UK’s Daily Mail collected some of the most egregious:

  • One wrote: ‘I don’t know I think getting killed by your favorite thing in the world is sweet. It [is] a nice gesture.’
  • Others mocked Mr. Kirk’s steadfast commitment to open debate and exchange of ideas: ‘Why didn’t Charlie Kirk just debate the bullet? he would have easily deflected.’
  • ‘Hollow Point USA,’ said another, parodying the organization Kirk devoted his life to.

People have always been like this, I remind myself: partisan hatred and mockery are as old as politics. Yet, on the Internet folks too often don’t even hesitate to shout their darkest thoughts as if they were gems of wit and righteousness. This leads to . . . well, “Violence leads to more violence,” as respectable Democrats said.

Too many activists and “influencers” seem heedless of the consequences of ideological brinksmanship, of taking the nastiness in their minds and spewing it to the masses.

It’s horrific, but maybe we, as individuals in a culture at a perilous moment in history, should acknowledge what horrors always hide in the dark. Now made visible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Current Madness

Two disturbing murders are in the news and in divided-divisive discussion: that of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Murder was once a private matter, in the sense that the perpetrator, hoping not to get caught, does his or her horrific deed away from cameras and prying eyes. 

Public murder is different. The provocation in killing someone in full public view, with many witnesses, is almost inevitably terroristic in nature. And just so, many of the mass shootings and spree killings of recent years are indeed classified as terrorism.

The stabbing of the young white woman on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a black man in view of other commuters, does not seem quite political even if possibly racially motivated. The terror of it is there. But is the -ism? Did Decarlos Brown really do it to change opinion or policy (that is a major determinant of terrorism)? No. It was expressive.

Of racism or hateful madness — one or both.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is more obviously terroristic. Mr. Kirk was speaking on a university campus fielding a question about the rise of violence by trans people. And then came the bullet ripping through his neck, in view of his wife and children as well as the audience.

Both persons detained by police earlier today have been released — so, as I write this, the evil person who assassinated Charlie, in what smacks of a professional hit, remains at large.

There is something additionally ugly and troubling here. Kirk was always open to debate and dialogue. He held no political power, but he had a voice — often that of reasonableness. This was a direct terroristic attack on free speech. 

Charlie Kirk’s. And yours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Cultural Erasure

Cracker Barrel

Once upon a time, I didn’t think “culture war” issues were important. Give me liberty or — at least lower taxes and allow better representation in Washington.

But in recent years, as the left went woke and the right went MAGA, a number of cultural issues became . . . salient. Unavoidable. Key, even.

In “The Corporate Logo That Broke the Internet,” David French — late editor of National Review and now token rightist for The New York Times — defends the Cracker Barrel logo rebranding effort, where the image of an old man (Uncle Herschel, in Cracker Barrel lore) leaning against a barrel,” as French describes it, was removed.

Also removed? The tagline on the old logo: “Old Country Store.” All that was left was “Cracker Barrel” on a yellow field.

O, the uproar! And from the right! 

Mr. French thinks it all very stupid. “Right-wing activists did the same thing that they mocked the left for in the [Sydney] Sweeney [American Eagle ad] affair. They looked at a completely normal, innocuous marketing effort, deemed it to be deeply politically coded and then lashed out.”

He contends that the protesting “voices never really explained how a plain logo with the restaurant’s name was woke,” yet the explanation is right before us, staring us in the face everywhere we go.

It was “woke” for corporations to remove beloved commercial icons such as Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben (now “Ben’s Original”), and “Mia,” the Land O’Lakes Indian maiden. In each of these logos the supposedly “offensive” and “stereotypical” images were removed ostensibly to avoid offending the easily offended. Leaving customers with blank, unoriginal, uninspiring and non-comforting signage.

Exactly what happened when the corporate bigwigs took out the iconography from the Cracker Barrel logo: All nostalgia liquidated.

Cultural erasure used to be a leftist theme, but thanks to today’s enlightened corporations, it has become universal, as the soullessness of modish symbology has become painfully obvious. 

Define woke as erasure in the name of non-erasure. Opposing erasure generally is the defense of culture. That’s not a manufactured “outrage,” or a form of “bullying,” as French asserts.

It’s just Common Sense! I’m Paul Jacob. 

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