Category: ideological culture

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Statues and Limitations

Thomas Jefferson, pixelated, Robert E. Lee, Washington, Jefferson, free speech, slavery, Nazis, Charlottesville, KKK, slippery slope

“Should they take down the Jefferson Memorial?”

That is what PBS’s Charlie Rose asked Al Sharpton. Now, the “Reverend” is not my go-to source for political insight, but his answer* caught my attention.

“I think that people need to understand that, when people that were enslaved and robbed of even the right to marry and had forced sex with their slave masters, this is personal to us,” replied Rev. Sharpton. “My great-grandfather was a slave in South Carolina . . . Our families were victims of this.”

Asked if this precluded “public monuments” for “everyone associated with slavery,” Sharpton argued: “When you look at the fact that public monuments are supported by public funds, you are asking me to subsidize the insult to my family.”

One can attack the messenger, Sharpton, sure. But what if we instead think of him as our neighbor? I certainly wouldn’t want to insult a neighbor, much less make him pay for the privilege.

Notably, the Reverend embraced privatization, suggesting, “You have private museums.” Privatizing controversial monuments would certainly solve Sharpton’s stated problem.

Of course, the logic behind taking down statues or dismantling the Jefferson Memorial — or merely privatizing them — might also lead to changing the names of cities, counties and states, rivers and mountains. And it’s not just Washington and Jefferson — twelve presidents were slave owners, including Union General U.S. Grant.

Who knows how many are undeservedly memorialized?

Frankly, I’ve never liked the name of my Virginia county: Prince William. A liberty-loving people ought not be stuck with such a monarchial brand.

Let the people decide.

But by vote, not street brawl.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* This exchange begins at the 15:22 mark in the interview.

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ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

The Great Diversion

Nazi, Civil War, soldiers, dead soldiers, Charlottesville, antifa

Though the breakdown of civil debate seems new, the subjects are old. We are actually talking about Nazis, again. Nazi death counts. And the Confederacy. The former defeated by my father’s generation, the latter defeated several generations earlier.

Why?

Because talking about the future would require actual thought. It’s easier to fight over the past, over symbols of the past.

That is why there was a Charlottesville debacle. It is about a statue, a monument to dead soldiers featuring the Confederacy’s General Robert E. Lee. And what it means. The “Unite the Right” rally was set in Charlottesville because of the city council’s decision to remove it.

It is interesting, though, that the event did not unite “the Right.” Conservative and even many alleged “alt-right” groups refused to participate.

But “the Left” seems more united than before. If you focus on past racism and the persistence of Nazi and Confederate symbology, it’s pretty easy to agree. I agree.

And yet, I take a step back, and remember that those monuments do not have the univocal racist meaning attributed to them. They were intended to heal wounds.*

Now they open up old ones.

And yet this is all a diversion. We are facing a major set of crises that could lead to war, depression, chaos, and (possibly) worse. But we are not now handling them because we are fighting over symbols of the past.

This may be a very human thing to do.

But it is not smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At least 350,000 young American men died wearing Confederate uniforms in the Civil War, and half a million Union soldiers are believed to have died directly from their war wounds. Today’s population is ten times greater, so adjusted for today it would be eight million deaths. That is a lot of searing wounds.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism

Loco Micro Repression

Close but no cakewalk prize.

Modern social justice advocates sometimes come up with legitimate complaints . . . only to wander off terra firma and into cloud-cuckoo land.

“Microaggressions” is one of these airy wanderings, and Katherine Timpf has spotted another in the ever-growing catalog of social justice beefs:

The size of our society’s chairs is now being considered a “microaggression” against overweight people, according to a guide released by The New School, a private college in New York City.

Proponents of this cause, Timpf notes, insist that “Microaggression is not ‘Micro’ in Impact,” and that the best response to faux pas, slights, indelicacies, and what-have-you is snitching to the administration and intervention from same. Quite overbearing, if you ask me. During my too brief college stint it would have been considered an insult — a microaggression? — to think that young adults could not handle minor affronts such as so helpfully listed at The New School.

But let’s get real here. Microaggressions do not justify treating adults as children and setting up college administrators as in loco parentis tribunals — much less Molotov cocktails, sucker punches or bike locks in socks. At best, as has been pointed out elsewhere, Ned’s microaggression justifies Zed’s microretaliation. Nothing more.

So how does one micro-respond?

Manners; etiquette.

In olden times, a well-mannered person, when snubbed or otherwise insulted had the option of responding with a cutting remark . . . without any actual cutting, without even raising the tone of his or her voice.

Activists and collegians really should look into it.

And not bring up chair size: the micro-chair/macro-posterior issue has too many “microaggressive” jokes built into it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility U.S. Constitution

Saturday’s Violence

police, violence, Charlottesville, white supremacist, Nazi, protest, counter protest, law and order

After delivering the final address at the Liberty International World Conference in Puerto Rico, Friday night, I learned that there had been violent clashes between white nationalists and counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A dozen people required medical treatment after being sprayed with mace.

Then, after traveling to the airport with new friends from Kazakhstan, China, and socialist-torn Venezuela, I began my eight-hour trek home. I had the subject for my weekend column, I decided: the lack of reports of even one arrest.

Last I checked, dousing folks with a chemical agent was a crime.

“Men in combat gear, some waring [sic] bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs and sticks and makeshift shields,” the Washington Post reported as I landed for my connecting flight home, “fought each other on the downtown streets, with little police interference.”

By the time I touched down in Washington, DC, James Field had driven his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and seriously wounding many others. A searing and sobering event.

My column, mostly written in transit, focused on the police response to political violence. From Trump rallies last year to the events at UC-Berkeley that “shut down” planned speeches . . . to attacks on Charles Murray and others at Middlebury College . . . to this Saturday’s events in Charlottesville, policing has been tepid at best.

People have a right to speak, to assemble, to protest, to let out a primal political scream. Our governments must protect that right, without regard to viewpoint, by preventing and policing against acts of violence.

When violence succeeds without consequences — garnering tons of attention for its perpetrators — we are likely to see more violence.

Government is not doing job one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Excepting Responsibility

Google, memo, sexism, discrimination, responsibility, guilt, justice, crime

Responsibility: demand it of others, expect it demanded of you.

So you might think that those who try to redress old grievances with compensatory (“reverse”) discrimination would be a bit more careful.

Yesterday I wrote about the bizarre Google Memo case, wherein an employee was fired for (basically) warning of a groupthink ideological monoculture at Google . . . thus proving him right.*

Last weekend I wrote about racial quotas in college entrance.

In both cases, there’s this idea that moderns in general and white males in particular must “accept responsibility” for the past.

And the evidence is undeniable: Our pale-faced ancestors — or more likely a very small percentage of other white people’s ancestors — held human beings in bondage. So, too, did almost all peoples around the world; slavery’s old. Here in these United States, after our bloodiest war, our forebears ended that ancient crime. Then there was another century of Jim Crow discrimination, with systemic violence committed against blacks in many areas of the country, often with government acquiescence or involvement.

Harvard and other educational institutions are trying to right those wrongs.

But there’s a problem: the principle behind their affirmative action schemes is lunatic: Each person of one race bears responsibility for the crimes committed by any person of that same race.

Far better is individual responsibility. Individuals have every right to compensation for any harm another has caused them, certainly. But folks have no right to create new harms against innocent people who happen merely to be of the same race or gender as those who have caused them past harm.

Justice is supposed to be blind, not crazy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The author, it is worth noting, addressed this monoculture in his title, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” I wonder if being proven right by one’s enemies compensates for job loss.

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Google Has the Memo

Google, memo, sexism, discrimination, James Damore, affirmative action

A Google employee, James Damore, internally distributed a memo, reprinted by Gizmodo* to widespread (if inch-deep) horror. The memo controversially takes apart Google’s efforts to increase its number of female employees.

Per the memo, it is surely unjust to discriminate against members of some groups in the cause of opposing alleged discrimination against members of other groups.**

But Damore (who has now been fired for his temerity) undermines this case. In the opening gambit we hear a note of appeasement: “I value diversity and inclusion. . . .”

Sounds harmless. Yet . . .

I don’t know about you, but when hiring somebody to do a job, I don’t rationally pursue “diversity and inclusion” in addition to the goal of hiring someone skillful, punctual, cooperative, bottom-line-enhancing. Not if I’m free to use my best judgment. I’d only also consider impacts on “diversity and inclusion” to avoid suffering politically-induced legal costs if I don’t.

The memo has other problems, but surely we can all agree: discriminating against members of particular groups is an unjust way to enhance workforce “diversity” . . . even if racial-sexual-age-height-width “diversity” were a legitimate goal for a company with the purpose of selling technology.

I’ve argued elsewhere against affirmative action in universities. Quotas based on group characteristics are always unjust when the qualifications for achieving a reasonable purpose have nothing to do with those group characteristics. That’s true whether we’re talking about students or workers, and whether the persons being sacrificed to serve “diversity” are white, black or Asian, male or female, gay or straight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Conveniently, Gizmodo neglected to include Damore’s extensive links to research that backed up his points, or his killer graph — even in its update.

** It is also far from self-evident that the disproportionately high number of male technology workers finds its root cause in sexual discrimination.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest

Gatekeeping 2.0

gate keeper, Jordan Peterson, censor, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, censorship, new media,

There once was opinion hegemony, almost a monopoly. Official gatekeepers kept unwanted ideas — including some of mine, including many I strongly oppose — out of public consideration.

Then came the online media revolution, which switched influence from corporate, academic-approved media outlets to truly new media, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

And now? The counter-revolution.

We saw it obviously in the downgrade and then banning of Milo Yiannopoulis’s Twitter, last year. Since then, new measures surface on a regular basis.

We helots, we commonfolk, must not be allowed actually to affect an election!

Or the hearts and inquiring minds of Americans, Europeans, and others worldwide.

Unless that opinion has received the imprimatur of the Center-Left.

I’ve written about this return of the Gatekeeper mentality before. The latest malefactor is YouTube, which locked Dr. Jordan Peterson out of his account this week* as well as put in place new policies to hobble the social sharing elements of YouTube.**

A week or so earlier, Patreon, an online crowdfunding patronage web service I’ve been thinking about trying out, cancelled independent journalist Lauren Southern’s account. Patreon managers charged that her most recent endeavor might cause “loss of life,” but, tellingly, “showed no evidence or proof, are allowing no appeal and have acted as judge, jury and executioner” — as one concerned netizen not inaccurately summarized.

The company’s CEO calmly explained himself to Dave Rubin on YouTube. Does he convince you?

I catch a whiff of panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Dr. Peterson’s account has since been reinstated, no explanation given.

** You can learn all this and more on YouTube itself — so the platform hasn’t been shut down as such. Instead, a new Artificial Intelligence will restrict videos that do not even break YouTube terms of service, removing Likes, Comments, and Search features.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies

Reactionary America

Anthony Scaramucci, reactionary, Trump, partisan, ideologue, ideology, "The Mooch", politics,

With the meteoric transit of Anthony Scaramucci — into the Trump Administration and then, in an eye-blink, out of it — I have never been more convinced of the vital importance of state and local activism.

Yes, it’s been a chaotic week in Trumptown. The new White House Director of Communications vulgarly communicated himself into administrative excommunication. So to speak.

Everybody’s heard the vulgarisms; we’ve all processed the insanity. It looks like Mr. Scaramucci is one of those professionals who think everybody else is an idiot, and in so thinking it, proves himself to be what he himself despises. @#$%&?!

The man nicknamed “The Mooch” screwed the pooch, as we now say, and we can all shake our heads and . . .

what?

What is the lesson?

We have long known the worst: our national politics is broken. It has been for a very long time. Is it possible we never recovered from the LBJ and Tricky Dick fiascos of my childhood? The parties have become more ideological and less regional, while the regions have become . . . less rational. The only word seems to be . . .

reactionary.

The press reacts to the president’s tweets, and the president tweets in response to media reaction.

Progressives hate progress; conservatives conserve nothing.

“Reactionary” is the apt word, despite all the term’s past Marxist associations, because no one seems able to think forward, independent of partisan oppositionalism.

Don’t drive yourself crazy with this. Look homeward; think locally, act locally, and let’s build on a solid foundation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

ObamaCare’s Casualties

healthcare, Obamacare, TrumpCare, ACA, Affordable Care Act, Healthcare reform, government, socialism

We all know the truth: Partisan “warfare” yields the usual war casualty, truth itself. Now, because of the increasing weight of federal government presence in healthcare markets, partisan untruth incurs medical costs.

Take the goofy Republican plan(s) to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare — pushed with so many half-truths and downright lies that one wonders where to begin. But before die-hard Republicans get too incensed about this judgment, let’s note that the supporters of the mis-named “Affordable Care Act” are no better.

Probably worse.

“Fact-checking,” writes David Harsanyi on the media mishandling of ObamaCare, “has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion.” Journalists now seem more like spin doctors.

And their patient? The reputation of ObamaCare’s namesake.

One journalist, for example, insists that “Obama didn’t lie or ‘mangle facts’ or mislead anyone,” Harsanyi writes.

What does this journalist claim Obama did in repeatedly promising “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”?

Well, “he gave a ‘misguided . . . pledge.’ The word ‘misguided’ intimates that Obama wasn’t misleading anyone on purpose.”

It helps the former president save face if he accidentally got us in this fix. He had the best intentions, you know.

Worse yet, as both sides snipe about these little untruths, they lose sight of the biggest truth, which I wrote about this weekend: that “government-run” means “government-decided,” and that, in turn, means

government deciding matters of your life and your death.

It would be helpful if our leaders took this all a bit more seriously, daring to speak truth . . . to us . . . as well as to themselves and each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

According to Economics

Tom Woods, Contra Krugman, podcast, healthcare, welfare,

“Everywhere you look, economics is despised,” writes Tom Woods in his Tuesday email letter.

You know what isn’t despised? A daily email letter.*

But I digress; back to economics.

“The gimme-free-stuff people hate it because they don’t like being told that there might be undesirable side effects from seizing other people’s things.”

Well, true enough. But turn it around: many people demand free stuff at least in part because they do not understand the bigger picture . . . which Mr. Woods ably provides in his daily podcast and on his weekly Contra Krugman podcast with economist Bob Murphy.

“Politicians hate it, because it imposes logical constraints on what political activity can accomplish.”

True, but, like many in the general public (from whence they come), politicians’ prior lack of economic knowledge also leads, in part, to their hubris.

“Even some folks in the business world hate it, because (1) they’d rather agitate for special privileges than hear the case for free markets, and (2) they’d rather have low interest rates than be warned about the causes of the business cycle.”

Yes, too true. But, again, business people are generally just people, most of whom haven’t even been exposed to something beyond boring and misleading textbook econ, if that. Mr. Woods knows that, since that’s what his mission is, exposing more folks to ideas beyond what he calls “the index card of allowable opinion.”

Well, I’m all about allowing the unallowable — if it’s right!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Historian Woods is now doing what I’ve been doing since 1999, providing a daily common-sense thought that is short and easy-to-read and dropped into your email box every weekday. Mine goes up online at ThisIsCommonSense.com; I don’t see his on his website . . . but I do see a lot of books and podcasts!

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