Paul Jacob goes over the big stories of the week, three of which feature anti-racism gone bad, very bad:
This Week in Common Sense, May 1, 2021.
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Truly Antifascist
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by philosopher Benedetto Croce [pictured, above] in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, sanctioned the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on October 31, 1922.
The manifesto was published by Il Mondo on May 1, 1925, which was Workers’ Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (celebrated on April 21). The Fascist press claimed that the Crocian manifesto was “more authoritarian” than its Fascist counterpart — a typical leftist dismissal of what used to be called “liberalism” — in Italian, liberismo — but which Croce dubbed liberism, to distinguish it from the dirigiste quasi-socialisms of self-described “liberals” of the time.
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The Cats’ Pajamas
In all the talk of “social media” — their psychological effects on us; their political power; their abusive treatment of our privacy and our loyalty — one thing does not get talked about enough: that social media’s chief utility for many of us is not social at all.
Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Gab, Instagram, Quora — these are personal databases.
Databases on the Cloud, sure; databases open to the public and open to paying advertisers, surely (that’s how the media giants make money while providing us with a free service).
But they remain databases. And, as such, they allow us to log our interactions with both online and physical worlds, storing our photos, videos, audios, links, thoughts, questions & answers, and more, so we may retrieve them later for whatever projects we may be engaged in.
This is no small thing if you are in a “business” like ThisIsCommonSense.org, where mining what I read two weeks ago can turn into something I need tomorrow.
Trouble is, the search features of most social media
It would be nice if the social media companies that mine our data for their pecuniary advantage would also allow us to mine our
So, take this as advice to alternative social media developers, like the Flote app: if you are literally providing a database for clients (and not true P2P functionality), then give search features more serious attention.
So that we can quickly find and re-share our most sublime cat photos.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
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Nobel Laureate Economist
On April 30, 1902, economist Theodore W. Schultz was born. His work studying the quick post-war recovery in Germany and Japan led to his development of “human capital theory,” explicated in books such as Investing in People (1981) and several major papers, including “Investing in human capital” (1961) and “Transforming traditional agriculture” (1964).
He was co-winner (with William Arthur Lewis) of the 1979 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Schultz died in 1998.
California State Senator Josh Newman has, for now, withdrawn a bill to let elected officials facing a recall see the names of petition signers so that they may be asked if they really mean it.
The Democrat complains that critics call his bill “an attack on not just the recall but on them and their constitutional rights. It wasn’t a good context to have a conversation.”
So unfair!
The willingness of defenders of petition rights to speak up does sound pretty inconvenient for foes of this popular democratic check on power.
Perhaps we’re supposed to believe that under Newman’s legislation, the interviews would go like this: “Did you mean to sign the petition to recall me?” “I did.” “Just checking. Bye.”
Obviously, the targeted official’s opportunity and authority to quiz petition signers would enable his team to intimidate existing and prospective signers. The aim? Try to prevent a question with enough valid signatures from reaching the ballot.
Years ago, in other states, opposition campaigns sent retired FBI agents to knock on doors. Legal, but very intimidating. Which is why California does not make the names public.
The legislation would not have applied to the current petition drive to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom, an effort going splendidly with more than 1.5 million signers. But Newman’s bill was clearly motivated by the success of this campaign.
Or perhaps it’s residual animosity toward the recall
Of course, signing a petition in itself says “I want this question on the ballot.” If a petition signer changes his mind, there is a process to retract it. No bullying follow-up needed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Herbert Spencer
The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.
Herbert Spencer, First Principles (1862): Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science.
On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
Music is, arguably, the crowning artistic achievement of our civilization.
It grew out of many folk and ecclesiastical practices, but one of the great innovations that allowed both Bach and The Beatles, Beethoven and Broadway, Bartok and “beats,” is the theory of music.
Which rests on that great innovation, musical notation.
Not my area of expertise, alas, but I tip my hat to the educators who know the physics and the art in precise and powerful ways.
Unfortunately, stupidly racist anti-racism has infected even music education. The latest example? The University of Oxford is considering a plan to get rid of teaching music through teaching notation.
“Sheet music is now considered ‘too colonial,’” explains The Telegraph, “while Beethoven and Mozart, and music curriculums in general, are believed to have ‘complicity in white supremacy.’”
While mainly an attack on classical music, our popular music rests upon a lot of basic western technique, too. The idea that musical notation is racist is itself bizarrely racist. Do these people think because whites invented musical notation, non-whites are oppressed by it? Yes, the opponents of western musical notation, who include “activist students” as well as “activist professors,” are apparently ashamed of a tradition focused on “white European music from the slave period.”
But until fairly recently, all civilization was “the slave period.” And Europe, which developed the tradition, wasn’t the world’s most slave-ridden society during the period of western music’s development: Africa and Asia were.
Slavery is bad. Very bad. Freedom is good. Very good. But you don’t reject good things because they once upon a time touched bad things. We can have both freedom and music.
And musical notation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Image from William Creswell
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Anders Chydenius
Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.
Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, §2 (1765).