Unca Darrell

JULY 31, 2020 / Kimbell: Systemic racism? No, no, no. Something different, something worse.

THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY, which ended nearly 150 years ago, has no bearing -- zero -- on the plight of American blacks today. What does affect them, mightily, is the destruction of the black family, a project brought to us by more than five decades of Democratic welfare policy

The PR surrounding Lyndon's Johnson's Great Society told the world its aim was to abolish poverty. [Its] actual effect was . . .

JULY 30, 2020 / What's happening at the federal courthouse in Portland . . .

and in many other cities governed by Democrats is not protest or even rioting. It's more. It's . . .

JULY 29, 2020 / Democrats in Congress . . .

. . . govern by bullying and character assassination, as a mob.  

Attorney General William Pelham Barr shows what happens when the designated victim refuses to be bullied or have his character assassinated.

Democrats in universities and the culture at large also use bullying and character assassination. It's called the cancel culture.

Voting Trump and  Republican won't end leftist bullying and character assassination.

But if you vote against against Trump and for Democrats, you are allying yourself with bullies and character assassins.

 

 

JULY 28, 2020 / The progressive war on free speech, democratic debate, and cultural tolerance

ANGER AT THE KILLING of George Floyd has spurred useful reflection about race and person some important police reform. But the political and cultural forces have transformed in recent weeks into something far less healthy -- a ferocious campaign of political conformity sweeping across American artistic, education, business and entertainment institutions.

We describe this as a Jacobin moment because it has the fervor and indiscriminate judgment of the revolutionary mind. The guillotine isn’t in use, but the impulse is the same to destroy careers, livelihoods and reputations. The wave of resignations, firings, disavowals and forced apologies at institutions large and small is moving so fast it is difficult to keep track.

 

 

This month editors at the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer lost their jobs after staff revolts over an op-ed and headline, respectively. Now the editor of Philadelphia Magazine, Tom McGrath, is resigning after the staff made racial demands. Critics pointed to stories they disliked from 2013 and 2015.

Economists have often been more resistant to ideological orthodoxy than other intellectuals. No longer. University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig lost his contract with the Chicago Federal Reserve after tweets in which he argued that the Black Lives Matter movement “just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.” Mr. Uhlig said he favored the Democratic Party’s more moderate reform proposals. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, 13 years at the helm, rolled over without a peep.

Economists now want Mr. Uhlig stripped of his editorship of the Journal of Political Economy. New York Times political enforcer Paul Krugman tweeted that Mr. Uhlig is a “privileged white man” and he doubted his “objectivity” to edit the journal. Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan combed through Mr. Uhlig’s old blog posts and claimed to be outraged that Mr. Uhlig in 2017 criticized left-wing violence.

The purge is being felt across academia. One lecturer was suspended by UCLA’s business school for a blunt email rejecting a student request to make different rules for final exams for black students. Another is facing investigation after reading in class Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It contains the n-word, so professors may now deny students a classic American document on moral opposition to unjust state power.

At MIT, a chaplain was forced out over an email that condemned George Floyd’s death but also noted his criminal record and said, “Many people have claimed that racism is major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.”

The purges have reached into left-wing circles beyond the media. David Shor, an analyst at progressive consultancy Civis Analytics, was pushed out soon after tweeting research from Princeton calling into question the efficacy of riots. The leadership of the Poetry Foundation resigned this month after an open letter denounced the foundation’s statement denouncing systemic racism for being too vague.

In the world of sports, the NBA’s Sacramento Kings cut ties with announcer Grant Napear after he was asked on Twitter his views on Black Lives Matter and replied that “ALL LIVES MATTER...EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” The coach of Oklahoma State University had to publicly apologize after he was photographed on a fishing trip wearing a shirt bearing the logo of “One America News,” a pro-Trump network.

Entertainment is also being subject to new forms of regulation on artistic expression. HBO announced this month that it is temporarily scrubbing “Gone With the Wind,” the classic Civil War novel-turned-movie, from its video library. Mobs are pulling down statues of Confederate generals, but in San Francisco they also pulled down Junipero Serra, an 18th-century missionary and Catholic saint, and U.S. Presidents are targets (see nearby).

The purges also reach into local schools and governments. A Vermont principal was removed after posting on Facebook “I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter,” but “Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.” The mayor of the northern California town of Healdsburg resigned after doubting police reform was necessary in that community. She was excoriated and told local press that “my intention was to follow through with my term, but basically at what personal price?”

Some of the targets of these campaigns may have spoken or acted clumsily, but apologists for cancel culture can find reasons to stigmatize or banish anyone. For some, the destruction of social goods like academic freedom and political pluralism is merely collateral damage if the goal is seen as just. We doubt most Americans agree with this unforgiving and punitive approach to cultural change, but the revolutionaries are now in charge with a vengeance.

They won’t stop by themselves because their campaign is essentially about power and control, and they need new villains. But as they march through liberal institutions, they are also laying waste to liberal values of free speech, democratic debate and cultural tolerance.

Someone has to stop this, and first and foremost that means the liberal establishment. The leaders of universities, foundations, museums, the media and corporations need to draw on their remaining moral authority to make the case for a liberal society. There is a risk that anyone who speaks up, however reasonably, will become a mob target. But if one or two lead, perhaps others will follow.

Social comity in a polarized society will not be achieved through coercion and struggle sessions. If liberals won’t stop the Jacobin left, expect a political backlash and social fracture that will make Donald Trump’s Presidency look like a tea party.

Editorial, "America's Jacobin Moment: The cultural putsch in America's institutions strikes at liberal values," The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com), June 23 2020 (abridged, emphasis added).

Three points:

The left's attacks on free speech, democratic debate, and cultural tolerance are a partial preview of the left's hoped-for fundamental transformation of America.

The Wall Street Journal's call on "leaders of universities, foundations, museums, the media and corporations" to defend liberal (in the traditional sense) society is misplaced. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

What we must do is contribute to President Trump's campaign, then vote for him in November. Period. End of discussion.

JULY 27, 2020 / Sowell on the rampaging presumptions of the left

FROM Thomas Sowell, "Socialist or Fascist," Townhall (townhall.com), June 12, 2012 (abridged, emphasis added):

Back in the 1920s . . . when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot -- and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people -- like themselves -- need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People . . . ."

That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters.

The self-flattery of the vision of the left also gives its true believers a huge ego stake in that vision, which means that mere facts are unlikely to make them reconsider, regardless of what evidence piles up against the vision of the left, and regardless of its disastrous consequences.

Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom. 

JULY 24, 2020 / Dan Crenshaw's diagnosis . . .

. . . of the culture of perpetual outrage is correct. Not so sure about his prescription.

NAVY SEAL DAN CRENSHAW was grievously injured in Afghanistan in 2012. A sudden explosion hit him like a train and killed and injured comrades whose agony he could hear but not see. He had lost his vision in both eyes, but after months of grueling rehabilitation—including extended periods harnessed face down in a hospital bed—doctors miraculously restored the vision in one eye.

In “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage,” Mr. Crenshaw reflects that critical to his recovery was a sense of history and stoicism, a realization that many others have undergone even more challenging hardships. “A little perspective,” he writes, “can be the difference between spiraling into dark despair and clawing your way back to the light.”

In "Things Could Be Worse," The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com), April 9, 2020, Daniel Shuchman reviews Dan Crenshaw, Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage (abridged, emphasis added).

How do you achieve this mind-set in the face of such difficult circumstances? Even if you can’t actually live the ordeals experienced by most of humanity throughout history, you can at least learn about them. The antidote to self-pity and hopelessness, Mr. Crenshaw found, was recognizing that, as bad as his injuries were, “it could have been worse” and that many others “have had it harder,” including other veterans with whom he served. Internalizing this reality allows you to adjust “the lens through which you view your current situation.” 

“Fortitude” isn’t just about persevering over personal adversity. It is, rather, a wide exploration of prevailing cultural maladies that flow from the decline of resilience—political polarization, the loss of nuance and shame in public life, the rise of outrage mobs, and the ascendance of victimhood as the pinnacle of virtue. 

The book has elements of a combat memoir, social critique, political analysis and self-improvement manual. These disparate genres are seamlessly woven into a plain-spoken, cohesive and timely argument and call for renewal.

The author’s character and worldview were formed, Mr. Crenshaw tells us, growing up in Texas and South America in the 1990s. When he was 8 years old, he lost a croquet match to his mother. The future commando was not a good loser and raged in fury at his defeat.

Compounding his anger, he recalls, was a feeling that he should have been allowed to win. His mom, perplexed at the boy’s outburst, pointedly noted that his skills were simply not good enough and that just because he was a kid and may have felt entitled to victory, actual performance is what truly matters.

One imagines that today’s cohort of 8-year-olds must be undefeated in any competition against their parents; the kids certainly have the trophies to prove it. This change in culture is one of Mr. Crenshaw’s chief concerns. The entitled impulses of his childhood self, he laments, have become embedded across American life.

When dealing with personal failures and disappointments, Americans are increasingly taught not to self-reflect and strive to improve but rather to find someone to blame, sue or otherwise scapegoat. There is a race to achieve the new ultimate in prestige—the highest status of victimhood—for which affirmation is offered by human-resources departments, provosts’ offices, lawyers or other authorities. And certainly Twitter.

This romanticization of victim status is the “font of outrage culture,” in Mr. Crenshaw’s view. At the same time, he takes pains to acknowledge: “If a real injustice has been committed against you, you are understandably enraged.” Addressing true unfairness and inequity is an “indispensable element of a just society . . . . What I do advise against is the automatic assignment of blame outward” and the absolving of personal responsibility. But our culture has expanded the definition of victimhood, celebrating it as a “heroic attribute.”

Even the Navy, Mr. Crenshaw shows, is not immune. When he retired from the military, the Bronze Star winner was practically begged to accept a full package of Social Security disability benefits intended for people who are truly unable to work. The Navy’s attitude was “mind-blowing,” he says, because “I have a disability . . . but I am not disabled.”

Meanwhile, kids are trained to be on guard for “microaggressions” and to seek opportunities to “take offense” or to “call out” those who do not conform to cultural orthodoxies. A thoughtless joke or a poor choice of language is now regularly equated with a physical assault, with the remedy of public shaming or ruination. The notion that everyone has his or her own “truth,” independent of objective reality, has the effect of hardening opinions and closing minds. This, to Mr. Crenshaw, is the “elevation of emotion above reason” and has led to an angrier, more polarized and unforgiving society. The loudest, most uncompromising and strident voices get rewarded in media, politics and popular culture. The author advocates the calm and serenity that he learned as a SEAL, a mode of being he says leads to curiosity, productive skepticism and adaptability. He yearns for the day when a social-media comment might read: “I hadn’t thought of it that way thank you for clarifying.”

In a long-shot victory, Mr. Crenshaw was elected to Congress in 2018 as a Republican representing part of Houston. Though he has many strong political views, he urges intellectual humility—a willingness to say “I don’t know,” to question one’s own beliefs, and to change one’s mind with new knowledge. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t reveal many occasions in which he has done this in his own life. He is commendably evenhanded in highlighting instances in which progressives as well as members of his own party have failed to adhere to the ideals of accountability, civility and tolerance to which our public life ought to aspire.

But perhaps because people “hate being told they are wrong,” especially by those “on their side,” the book is silent about one very prominent Republican who is not known for humility or welcoming constructive criticism.

About these omissions, the new congressman might remember why he believes the debriefings after SEAL operations were key to personal growth: “We are relentless with criticism. There is no coddling, only truth.”

JULY 23, 2020 / Klingenstein on Multiculturalism

YESTERDAY, UNCA D urged you to read Thomas D. Klingenstein's essay, "Preserving the American Way of Life." I excerpted his definition of "American Way of Life," which is, he argues, "being attacked by proponents of another way of life (or regime)" -- multiculturalism.

Our only relevant choice now, he argues, is between the two regimes: the American way of life or multiculturalism. For reasons he explains, they cannot be reconciled or compromised. Here's the clip (abridged, emphasis added): 

That other regime is multiculturalism. As I am using the term, multiculturalism sees society not as a community of rights-bearing individuals with a shared understanding of a national good, but as . . .

JULY 22, 2020 / You must read this. Period.

THOMAS KLINGENSTEIN's essay, "Preserving the American Way of Life" (link below), is a must-read. It will give you the vocabulary and mental framework you need for understanding and fighting the political and cultural wars of our time.

My intellectual friends will surely bridle at Mr. Klingenstein's title, particularly the notion that there is an American way of life that needs preserving or, alternatively . . .

JULY 20, 2020 / Henninger on how Beltway's best and brightest subverted American system

Herewith a tutorial. Back in the 1980s, writers for the Journal’s editorial page coined the phrase “inside the Beltway” to describe the moatlike highway around the nation’s capital, whose inhabitants had become politically and psychologically isolated from the rest of the country.

Many Americans then came to believe presidential elections were the one way they could send the Beltway a message. In 2016, we had an Earth-to-Beltway election, whose message was . . .

JULY 16, 2020 / Trump on Rushmore

IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD OR READ President Trump's July 3 remarks at the foot of Mount Rushmore, you've missed a good speech.

Here's a snip:

Our Founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity. No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America. And no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.

Here's the full text: