Category: ideological culture

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free trade & free markets ideological culture political economy too much government

Sweden’s Electric Sense

Sweden, climate change, nuclear power, energy,regulations, wind power, solar power

Common sense in Sweden! Energy in Sweden!

Under the policy of Sweden’s current government, the Swedish people are to be allowed to illuminate and heat their homes and do all the other things they use electricity for. The Swedish parliament has formally relinquished the government’s former target of somehow reaching “net-​zero” renewable energy by 2045.

Such unreliable means of generating power as erratic wind and erratic sunshine just don’t cut it, says Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson.

“We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity, and we need a stable energy system. In substantial industrialized economies … only a gas-​to-​nuclear pathway is viable to remain industrialized and competitive.”

The new energy policy is an about-​face for Sweden, which decided in the ’80s to nuke nuclear power and pursue 100 percent “renewable” energy.

Sweden is now following the lead of Finland. After Finland’s latest nuclear power plant went on line in April, reports Peta Credlin, “wholesale power prices dropped 75%, almost overnight. The Olkiluoto 3 plant is … delivering 15 percent of the country’s power needs. Nuclear now provides around half of the country’s total electricity generation.”

Nuclear power has gotten a bad rap in many countries, including the United States. But if societies and governments are rightly or wrongly determined to retreat from reliance on fossil fuels while also not pulling the plug on industrial civilization, a steady supply of electricity has to be obtained somehow or other.

Nuclear power is one major way to do the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture regulation

To Die for DEI

hospital, doctor, D.E.I. DEI, diversity, equality, inclusion

Next time you’re being operated on, you probably don’t want your doctor to be someone trained and hired solely because he satisfied affirmative-​action criteria.

We’ll have to especially worry about this possibility, though, if trends at certain institutions continue — including at universities such as UCLA Medical School. There, up to half the students are now flunking basic tests of medical knowledge.

By design.

In November 2021, a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, “exploded in anger” because an admissions officer had doubts about admitting a black applicant whose academic credentials were way below the average of other students at the school.

“Did you not know African-​American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” she wanted to know, demonstrating a capacity for non sequiturs. Forget scores: “we need people like this in the medical school.”

The time for UCLA professors and admissions officers to raise hell about Lucero’s illegally race-​conscious admissions policies was then, or sooner. At least now, though, many are speaking out.

“I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” one instructor tells the Free Beacon. “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”

“I wouldn’t normally talk to a reporter,” says another. “But there’s no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school.”

Well, word is out now — and in abundant detail. Let’s hope it’s not too late to set this school and others back on the right track.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Polylogism or Bulverism … or 1984?

polylogism, Bulverism, logic, reality, debate, fallacy

The Epoch Times’s current Opinion section tackles a subject that might surprise you. Polylogism!

What? 

The term was coined by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. “There is not one logic, one truth, one path of thinking that is subject to verification,” Jeffrey A. Tucker asserts in “Polylogism Is the Root Problem.”

Polylogism is the idea behind a lot of trendy isms, pushed by many ists. 

“Every group and every interest operates according to its own logic,” Tucker goes on. “No one is in a position to say: This does not follow from that. There are multiple and infinite ways to think and emote, and no one is in a position to say which is correct, valid or invalid.”

The idea that there can be “many” logics is indeed present in many forms of modern and post-​modern argumentation, like Marxism and Freudianism. C. S. Lewis also attacked the ploy, calling it “Bulverism” in an amusing essay named after a fictitious fellow named “Bulver” who learned from his mother how to argue most effectively — “Oh you say that because you are a man,” she challenged. 

It’s an evasion.

According to Bulverism, er, polylogism, “There are no fallacies,” argues Tucker, “only perspectives.”

Remember Nietzsche? “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

This sort of thing makes arguing against tyranny hard, because the tyrant’s sycophants can simply say ‘what you call tyranny only looks like that because you are x; but we are y, and therefore what you call tyranny is freedom to us.’ 

“Polylogism sounds like a fancy philosophy,” Tucker concludes, “but it is nothing but the handmaiden of tyrants.” 

Are you thinking of Newspeak?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture partisanship

Krauthammer’s Law

2 Americas, liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, progressives, stupid, evil

It seemed like wisdom in 2002: “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” The late Charles Krauthammer expounded this “law” in a column entitled “The central axiom of partisan politics.” 

I am no longer sure this was ever correct, and am confident it doesn’t apply to American politics now.

First off, the enemy of conservatives may have been “liberals” 150 years ago. But not now. The proper word is “progressive,” not “liberal,” and to those who follow the to and fro of substantive policies, the most classically liberal people right now are conservatives.

And “conservatives” is not the right word, either, is it? Progressives hate hate hate the dominant strain in the Republican Party, the Trumpians. Well, Trump isn’t now, nor has he ever been, a “conservative,” though some of his actions during his term in office, were more conservative than any other Republican president of our time. What Trump and his followers now oppose is the “insider-​ism” of big government, with Democrats constituting the dominant force of the administrative state and, yes, the Deep State. That is the nature of Republican populism.

Another problem with Krauthammer’s Law is that progressives have always looked upon conservatives and decentralist populists in the dread Republican Party as both evil and stupid.

But it’s worse: both sides, today, look upon the other as both stupid and evil. 

The real question then, to anyone who ideologically distances himself from leaders on both sides, is to discern whether both sides are right about each other.

And, it follows, wrong about themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Library Against Liberty

library, Moms for Liberty, gender

In order to conduct a forum “on Fair and Safe Sport for Girls,” Moms for Liberty reserved and paid for a room at a library.

Then, the librarians ambushed them.

Yolo County Public Library Regional Manager Scott Love “invited disruptive protesters” to the August 2023 forum and then shut it down as soon as it started. He disagreed with Moms for Liberty that men who demand the right to participate in women’s sports are men. So the matter couldn’t even be discussed. Not in the library’s reserved and paid-​for meeting room.

With the help of the Institute for Free Speech and Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty sued, arguing that Yolo County Library had acted unconstitutionally.

According to the complaint, “Defendants are not required to agree with Plaintiffs’ views about protecting women’s sports. The First Amendment, however, requires that Defendants allow Plaintiffs to speak freely about the integrity of female athletics in library meeting rooms. It demands public library officials not enable — let alone participate in  — the disruption and cancellation of Plaintiffs’ events on account of their viewpoints.

“The Court should hold Defendants accountable for the damage they caused in censoring Plaintiffs’ event and ensure that such censorship never happens again.”

The library has now settled, revising its policies to (we hope) protect the freedom of speech of patrons who use its meeting rooms. It must also pay plaintiffs $70,000 in damages and legal costs.

Sadly, those funds come from taxpayers. Seems Mr. Love should pay a price.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

The French King Flip Flap

Jerry Seinfeld, censorship, woke culture, wokeism

There’s this great Jerry Seinfeld bit about how we treat our “important” friends on our smartphones: “They don’t seem very important, not the way you scroll through their names on your contact list like a gay French king.” And Mr. Seinfeld flipped his wrist in a motion of dismissal. “Who pleases me today?”

Well, Seinfeld is not pleasing the woke. Not today. Not The Washington Post’s Brian Broome. 

“Wake up, Mr. Seinfeld. Mean-​spirited humor isn’t cool anymore,” is Mr. Broome’s title. And his opinion is that times change, and meanie Mr. Seinfeld is a has-​been for making fun of marginalized people. 

You may have judged Jerry Seinfeld as one of the lighter, cleaner comics, his act almost universal. Broome says you’re wrong. “I have never found Jerry Seinfeld funny,” he explains. “Even in the ’90s when his show was all the rage, I didn’t get why people thought it was hilarious. It always seemed to me to be about immigrants being odd or unhygienic or making fun of women’s faces or body parts. The show always seemed mean-​spirited to me, and that’s just not my kind of humor.”

O, shall thy pearls be clutched!

Wasn’t the self-​described “show about nothing” really a comedy of manners where the main characters, George Costanza, Elaine Benes, Cosmo Kramer, and Jerry himself served as the actual butts of the jokes? These four egoists fretted over their ultra-​liberal concerns about good manners but always behaved badly. And we always knew it. And somehow still liked them — because Seinfeld was not mean-spirited!

Broome characteristically ends on a vindictive note: “So, yes, if you make ham-​fisted jokes about women or the LGBTQ+ community or people living with disabilities or the French, someone will come for you.” Thus, the mob beheaded the king. And the priest. All with wrong opinions.

Would Broome think the point of the “gay French king” joke was to make fun of gays? But recall the actual target: ourselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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