Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture international affairs

Iranian Revolutionary Climate

Iran, protests, climate change

I was once bitterly opposed to the climate change. One minute raining, then snowing, then desert sun. Enough already.

But now I see that we need the climate change to fight tyranny.

Not everyone agrees. Nina Bookout simply refuses to accept the latest super-sophisticated scientific reasoning about how widespread protests happening in Iran — ostensibly because of a theocracy that is stomping everybody — are secretly being motivated by the climate change!!!!!

You know it’s scientific if it’s in “Scientific” American, a lot smarter now that it has dumbed down its content in recent decades. 

But Bookout just won’t follow the “science.”

Scientific American says climate change is “among the environmental challenges facing Iran that helped spark protests in dozens of cities. . . . A severe drought, mismanaged water resources and dust storms diminished Iran’s economy in recent years.” 

Protests are happening most in places with “climate refugees.”

Bookout differs: “The Iranian people KNOW that billions of dollars was freighted to Iran on Obama’s say-so. Thus, for several years, the Iranian government has had financial resources available to help those impacted by the drought and the earthquakes. . . . Instead the Iranian government [have been using] their cash . . . to prop up Hamas, Hezbollah, terrorism in Syria, and build up their military. . . . The security forces aren’t attacking protestors because of climate change.”

I’m with Scientific American. Let us have climate change wherever autocrats oppress the people, so that people will resist this oppression.

Thank you for your help, climate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Too Virtuous to Win?

politicians

The Democrats lost a presidential election where the biggest issue, shared by both contenders, was The Other Side Is Off-putting, Icky and Crazy. 

Third Way, a think tank pushing for “moderate” policy, almost acknowledged this in a widely-shared memo: “For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.”

So it’s not without reason that Third Way suggests Democrats drop the “therapy-speak,” for example — words like privilege, violence (“as in ‘environmental violence’”), othering, etc. Also to be nixed? “Seminar room language,” featuring jargon like subverting norms, systems of oppression, heuristic, etc.

Then there’s the far-out lefty nonsense, like chest-feeding and Latinx, along with the “criminal-excusing phraseology” — elaborate euphemisms like incarcerated people.

The upshot? “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”

Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin seems to think his party failed by trying too hard to persuade. 

“After six months as chair, I’ve learned that a lot of people, especially folks in DC, think they can change things by winning arguments,” Martin explained. “You know what winning the argument gets you? Maybe a nice round of applause and a few likes on Instagram. But the reality is, it doesn’t make life any better for any person. We have to stop settling on winning arguments with each other. We have to win elections.”

This is covered in an Epoch Times article that also shows the Democrat leader pressing the Too Virtuous to Win meme: “We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We’ve gotta stand up and fight. We’re not gonna have a hand tied behind our backs anymore.”

This pose, that “our side” is too good and noble and rule-following is, of course, echoed among Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Rethinking What Safety Means

crime, safety, law, police, Washington D.C.

Joe Scarborough threw kindling onto the fire. 

In the context of President Trump calling up the National Guard to help police the streets of Washington, D.C. — “you’ll have more police and you’ll be so happy, ’cause you’d be safe” said Trump — Scarborough prompted Symone Sanders, a Democratic strategist, fellow MSNBC host, and wife of a former night mayor of the city, with cedar soaked in kerosene: “You don’t think more police makes streets safer?”

“No, Joe,” she said, helping Morning Joe viewers decipher her racial identity: “I’m a black woman in America.

“I do not always think that more police makes streets safer.” 

Before you have time to wonder whether she’s advancing the law of diminishing returns in criminology, she quickly goes on: “When you walk down the streets of Georgetown” — a predominantly wealthy and white D.C. neighborhood — “you don’t see a police officer on every corner but you don’t feel unsafe. So what is it about talking about places like South D.C., right, Ward Eight (if you will), that people say ‘we need more officers to make us safe’?

“I think we have to rethink what safety means in America.”

While adding more police officers to a peaceful society won’t likely decrease crime much, a violent community is another story. People in these communities need greater safety to live their lives. Without becoming a statistic. Law enforcement that is visible on the street can surely help.

But rethinking the meaning of “safety” won’t. 

So what’s burning?

Democratic hopes, maybe. We’ll see how Trump’s move to clean up the capital goes.

Yet, if he tries to use the National Guard in other cities without constitutional warrant, that’d go beyond mere policing, into police-state territory. 

Just don’t consult Democratic strategists for a “rethink” of such distinctions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture international affairs

Art Caves to Power

Xi Jinping, China, Thailand, censorship, surveillance

The Chinese Embassy in Thailand has pressured the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre to censor an exhibit: to remove works dealing with China’s persecution of groups such as the Uyghurs and Tibetans. 

The exhibit’s curator notes an “irony”: the exhibit being censored is on the theme of censorship. Actually, it’s about more than that. Titled Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity, it’s an ambitious project, attempting “to reveal power in its entanglements, and to insist that art remains one of the last ungovernable territories of resistance.”

But the exhibit is held in the Kingdom of Thailand, not exactly known as a bastion of freedom and democracy. So it shocked no one when the gallery’s operators felt that they had no choice but to submit to China’s demand — in no small part because a financial sponsor and the Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had both accepted the diktat.

What happened is no isolated example of bad behavior — by China or by unresisting victims. Increasingly, we live in a world where the Chinese Communist Party tells us what can be said, what can be shown, what can be done.

Several years ago, a Marriott worker in Nebraska was fired after he or a colleague “liked” a pro-Tibet tweet using the Mariott social media account. The CCP exploded. Marriott has hotels in China. Marriott groveled.

Marco Rubio, then a U.S. Senator, said at the time that every week it seemed that another major company was shamelessly apologizing to the PRC for “some sort of ‘misstep’ related to Tibet . . . and other sensitive issues.”

It’s not just “art” that must learn to resist the governance of China  . . . before it’s too late.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture public opinion

Bad, Worse & Communist

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, corruption, socialism, communism

After four recent commentaries showing, without hyperbole, that Democratic Party mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is a flat-out seize-the-means-of-production communist, you might wonder why anyone could possibly vote for him. 

Well, elections are a choice. And New Yorkers have a plethora of lousy choices — especially the best-known politicians running against Mamdani. 

Take former Governor Andrew Cuomo — puh-leez! He finished second to Mamdani in last month’s Democratic mayoral primary but has vowed to stay in the race on the ballot line of his recently formed Fight & Deliver Party.

The key reason for Mamdani’s victory? Voter revulsion with Mr. Cuomo. After serving ten years as governor and announcing he would seek a fourth four-year term, Cuomo was rocked by sexual harassment allegations (including “attempts to silence victims”). Facing “almost certain removal from office” by the state legislature, he resigned in 2021. 

“To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace,” responded Mamdani to Cuomo in a televised debate. “I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority]. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records. And I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo.” 

Mamdani’s other major opponent is the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last year on five felony counts, including conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals, soliciting and accepting a bribe, and wire fraud. Though Trump’s Department of Justice dropped the prosecution, or maybe partly because of that, Adams is a pariah among the city’s supermajority of Democratic voters.

The problem is staring us in the face: When the choice is between communism and corruption, communism stands a better chance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Ugly Surge

antisemitism, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, education, schools

Is the ugly surge of antisemitism in the United States — whether homegrown or imported or both — now infecting primary school education?

According to a lawsuit filed against a school in Northern Virginia, an 11-year-old girl was subjected to repeated antisemitic harassment after the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.

The bullying grew worse, the accusation goes further, after the proprietor of the school, Kenneth Nysmith, allegedly hung a Palestinian flag in the school gym.

When the parents complained, Nysmith initially told them that their daughter needed to “toughen up.” Then the student and her two siblings were summarily expelled from the school without prior notice or real explanation.

The suit alleges that the three Jewish children were expelled because their parents had objected to “the school’s unwillingness to respond to anti-Semitic harassment of their 11-year-old daughter. The school had allowed anti-Semitism to take root in her class — in, for example, [a] picture of a social studies class project depicting the attributes of a ‘strong historical leader’” — featuring the face of Adolf Hitler.

Right up there with other strong historical leaders, such as Tamerlane, Joseph Stalin, and Pol Pot.

With allegations so over the top, we probably should proceed with care. But it turns out that the 11-year-old was not the one who first told her parents about how she was being treated. In February, a concerned classmate asked his mother to call one of the parents, Brian Vazquez. “With Mr. Vazquez on speakerphone, the classmate described a disturbing pattern of harassment and bullying.”

The lawsuit calls for an investigation of the school, an order that the school enforce its nondiscrimination policies and eliminate its hostile environment, damages, and other remedies.

We will see how the legal battle proceeds. This is a private school, which has a right to “educate” in its own way. However, the school must follow its own rules.

And, if these allegations are accurate, I hope the school will soon experience another aspect of being private: going out of business. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture property rights too much government

The Big Decommodification

Mamdani, New York City, public housing, socialism, communism

Tired of that rundown shack you live in — for which each month you must cough up the rent money or a mortgage payment? No doubt, you’re chomping at the bit for the chance to move into clean, spectacular, state-of-the-art government housing.

Well, you’re in luck! That is, if you live in New York City.

You see, on Tuesday evening, Sean Hannity informed his Fox News audience that Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ mayoral nominee, has a “plan to slowly eliminate home ownership in New York City.”

“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full decommodification of housing,” Mamdani declares in a 2021 video for the Gravel Institute. “In other words, moving away from the status quo, in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market.”

He says, “We’ll have to go beyond the market.”

That “has to be” the solution? Why? Because Mamdani’s socialist/communist dogma dictates that government should be the provider of all shelter? The “decommodification” must be “full” and complete. No private home can be permitted to be bought or sold . . . or lived in anymore.

Surely that would solve our problems.

The democratic socialist suggests that the government “gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership,” urging the city to “fully commit to a new era of social housing . . . using our wealth to build beautiful, high-quality social housing projects that offer good homes and strong communities to everyone.”

Yes, taxpayers, get ready to invest in the sparkling future of public housing. Cabrini-Green here we all come! 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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If Mamdani Wins

New York City, socialism, communism, authoritarianism

The civil war between sane New Yorkers and the other kind has reached its next phase. 

The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary has some high-profile Democrats, like Sen. John Fetterman, expressing chagrin over the success of this openly commie slash-and-burn, soak-the-(white)-rich, pro-Hamas guy. Others, like former President Bill Clinton, who once posed as a moderate, are cheering him on.

Mamdani is also anti-policing. He has said: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD . . . NO to fake cuts — defund the police.”

Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and former and current GOP nominee for NYC mayor, says that Mamdani “has a weird notion of how policing is, as if it should be people like Mahatma Gandhi walking around, you know, functioning as a social worker. That does not work.”

Some police officers say they’ll quit if someone so openly hostile to law and order — not to abuse of police power, but to reasonable policing when it’s obviously necessary — also wins the general election and becomes the next mayor. 

Top brass fear an exodus.

But would only police officers quit? Everyone in NYC who prefers civilization to annihilation should then quit. 

And it would be natural for many of the more successful New Yorkers to leave if Mamdani gets in on the strength of the NYC’s apparently huge and growing ressentiment vote and starts robbing and pillaging in earnest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Socialist Intifada

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, socialism, communism, state planning, equality, equity, taxes

“Do you think that billionaires have a right to exist?” Meet the Press host Kristen Welker asked Zohran Mamdani, the likely winner of last week’s still undecided Democratic Party mayoral primary in New York City. 

“I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” was the democratic socialist’s reply. 

So, his answer to whether they have a “right to exist” was . . . NO! 

“Because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality,” continued Mamdani, “and ultimately what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country.” 

Even equality at lower levels of wealth. By design and decree. 

But don’t worry your pretty little billionaire heads about being pilloried, prohibited, prevented from existing, because Mamdani generously offered: “I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of us.”

Ah, the rest of us . . . what does it all mean for us? Hmmm, could politicians aiming to tax, exploit, and totally end any such thing as “the rich” ever miss the mark and wind up hitting us of lesser wealth? And what if billionaires’ success is intimately tied to ours?

Still, New York City’s undesirables do not end with billionaires. Zohran Mamdani sees white people. (They’re everywhere.)

Welker confronted the Democrat state rep with a racially charged statement on his website: “Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods.”

Why bring up skin color?

The democratic socialist assured his policy is “not driven by race,” adding, “It is not to work backwards from a racial assessment of neighborhoods or our city.”

Of course, that “racial assessment” appears to be precisely what he’s working from.

Mamdani was also questioned about the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which he declined to condemn. It looks like his intifada will be against billionaires and white people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Uninvited

Rand Paul

There’s talk of proof that Iran now possesses a nuclear weapons capacity; Israel bombed the targets; war drums are beating — but for a short time yesterday, the news was all abuzz over the Trump Critic Snub.

The federal government’s official debt rushed to the $37 trillion mark — but Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took a few moments to shake his head over how he and his grandson were singled out by not being invited to the White House picnic.

“I just find it so incredibly petty,” Senator Paul said. “It’s really kind of sad that this is where we are.”

Politics is a petty business, too often, and this sure looked like one of those moments to upgrade the word with a capital P. Or with a T, for You-Know-Who.

Oddly, though, often it was the senator who was besmirched with the P word, not the prez!

“His complaint has sparked bipartisan mockery online,” explains Newsweek. “Vince Langman, a self-described member of the MAGA movement, told his 381,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter: ‘Rand Paul crying like a school girl because President Trump uninvited him from the White House picnic is the funniest thing I’ve seen on X in weeks.’”

I don’t know. Is it funnier than the Deep State admitting that it had been faking and fanning the flames of the UFO craze all along? 

Or blaming Senator Paul for noticing and not the White House for the actual snub?!?

The attack on Paul is dumb: the Kentucky senator has always been an equal opportunity critic.

Thankfully, Rand Paul and his grandson — and, presumably, Rep. Thomas Massie, another Big Beautiful Bill critic — are back on the picnic list.

Maybe they can hold a moment in silence, amidst the fun, as the debt hits $37 trillion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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