Quotulatiousness

February 22, 2025

“German politics have become a sad farce”

Filed under: Germany, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

German elections will be held very soon, and the all-party-but-one alliance to keep the extremely extreme extreme right wing out is sagging badly but the technocrats and the media are doing everything they can to hold the line:

“We are the cordon sanitaire – no cooperation with the AfD”: the banner leading the Berlin protest against AfD and CDU on 2 February, which was financed in part by the German taxpayer and arranged by semi-affiliated apron organisations of the governing Green and Social Democrat parties of Germany.

Behind all of the disingenuous fact-checking and the performative outrage, one detects in German mainstream commentary the deeper recognition that J.D. Vance was very far from wrong about a great many things in his landmark speech at the Munich Security Conference last Friday. Only the truth can provoke the kind of panicked and intemperate reactions that followed Vance’s remarks. German politics have become a sad farce – a ridiculous performance that every day I find a little more embarrassing. The primary reason for this farce, as Vance said, is the fear our political class harbour towards their own people, and their complete inability to reverse course on any of the catastrophic policies they have put their names to, from the energy transition to mass migration to the war in Ukraine.

The firewall will keep German politics frozen in amber for some time still. It will keep everything as it was ten years ago under Angela Merkel, until this inflexible, sclerotic system suddenly breaks and unleashes all of the potential energy it has accumulated in one great chaotic crisis. And make no mistake about it, that crisis coming, precisely because the controlled demolition that would be in the best interests of our rulers is also utterly beyond their imaginations and their talents. This might read at first like a pessimistic post, but I promise it’s not. I’m developing a cautious optimism almost despite myself as I try to ponder what will happen in the coming months.

In two days and thirteen hours, German voters will elect a new Bundestag. The polls could not be worse for the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and their smaller Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. The latest INSA survey presents a nightmare scenario for both parties. It has CDU/CSU at 30%, Alternative für Deutschland at 21%, the Social Democrats (SPD) at 15%, the Greens at 13%, Die Linke (the Left Party) at 7% and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) at 5%.

On the left are the INSA poll results, and on the right is the “theoretical seat distribution” that these numbers, if they were election results, would yield.

Readers often ask me whether the polls are understating AfD support. That is possible, but I’d argue the question is not important, because whether AfD come in at 20% or 23% won’t make much difference. Everything actually depends on the small socialist parties that few are talking about right now. Die Linke – successor to the DDR-era Socialist Unity Party – seems all but certain to make it back into the Bundestag, following a social media blitz that has won them wild popularity with young voters. The BSW, meanwhile, probably have even odds of clearing the 5% hurdle for representation.

If both Linke and BSW make it in, CDU and CSU are absolutely screwed, and this by their own cowardly insistence on the firewall. Refusing AfD votes means they will have to cave to the SPD and the Greens on everything to form a coalition with them. Otherwise, the left-wing parties will band together, hijack Bundestag procedure and form their own minority government right under their noses.

That’s right: The firewall means we stand a real chance of getting basically the same deeply unpopular SPD-Green government we have now, additionally radicalised by the hardline socialists of Die Linke. This is precisely the thing nobody wants and precisely the thing our political elites are prepared to deliver, all to keep the Evil Fascist Nazi Party away from power. If this happens, we’ll get a paralysed leftoid Chancellor who is incapable of so much as passing a budget. The AfD will climb in the polls and the CDU will bleed voters until the pressure grows so great, or the political crisis so intense, that they decide to break the firewall after all and chase the leftists out of power.

QotD: Modern journalism

Filed under: Education, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We Americans are truly blessed by having a mainstream media full of brilliant renaissance men, women, and gender non-specific entities who are masters of so many varied and intermittently useful skills and who are eager to share their knowledge with us benighted souls. The pandemic has revealed that every urban Twitter blue check scribbler, MSNBCNN panelist, NYT/WaPo doofus, and barely legal “senior editor” of a website you never heard of, is a Nobel Prize-winning epidemiologist, a master logistician, and a diversity consultant to boot.

They may all be lousy journalists, but damn it, they are also lousy at other jobs that they didn’t even pretend to train to do.

It’s awesome to see people with zero life experience in any relevant field weighing in as if we shouldn’t just laugh in their pimply faces. Here’s the typical resume of one of these hacks:

  • Went to high school, and never went to parties
  • Went to college, majored in journalism, and never went to parties
  • Went to journalism grad school, and never went to parties
  • Works in the media, and goes to Manhattan/Georgetown cocktail parties

This apparently qualifies them to explain to people like us who have actually done something in our lives how stuff is supposed to work.

Kurt Schlicter, “Our Super Smart Elite Shines During This Pandemic!”, TownHall.com, 2020-04-02.

February 21, 2025

“… a sea change in American foreign policy priorities”

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Theophilus Chilton on how the markedly changed US foreign policies under Donald Trump are roiling the old certainties of so many western “transnational” elites:

Last Friday, an event occurred which represents a sea change in American foreign policy priorities, but the importance of which may have been missed by many. Vice-President Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference. In this speech, he basically pulled no punches, calling out the various Western European governments for their support for mass immigration, their opposition to free speech, and the erosion of democratic functions within their governments. The speech itself presented a stark contrast between the new American administration and the “leadership” that currently exists in most European countries. It represents a decisive rupture between an American executive which is in the process of refuting the influence of a globalist transnational “elite” over its country and European governments which are still firmly ensconced in that elite’s thrall.

The thing is, Vance was pretty much right about everything he said. Mass immigration, especially that part of it coming from Africa and the Muslim world, is absolutely destroying the social fabric of every European nation as well as dragging down their standards of living toward third world levels. Euro governments, in fact, do absolutely hate freedom of speech and apply strictures that medieval monarchies would never have dreamed of instituting. For all their talk about the importance of democracy and the “threat” to it represented by Trump and his administration, Euro countries make an absolute mockery out of the entire concept. Those European slaves of the globalists can grumble and sit there aghast at Vance’s words, but the simple fact of the matter is that he was right in every way in the criticisms he leveled against them.

After all, these are the people who overturn Romanian elections because actual Romanians voted for the wrong person — all to “defend democracy”. These are the people who ban political parties to “defend democracy”. These are the people who let “migrants” stab little girls to death to “defend democracy”. These are the people who arrest Christians for singing hymns on a public street to “defend democracy”. These are the people who do armed midnight raids and throw people into prison for sharing memes on social media to “defend democracy”. You get the picture. Populism and popular sovereignty are such a threat to these regimes because their democracy is a sham, a foil used to give a pretended legitimacy to globalist policies which are destroying the actual people of these various countries.

For all the breathless hyperventilating about Russia “invading Europe” (which it is in no position to do, LOL), the fact is that there is nothing that the Russians could do to the people of Europe that would be worse than what their own governments already subject them to.

What makes this all the more amusing is the excited “nationalism” we’ve been seeing from the lefties and globalists in several of the countries that have been in the Trump/Vance crosshairs over the past month. A good example would be in Canada, in response to the tariff threats that Trump made to try to push the Canadian government into being a little more proactive about securing their side of the border from the fentanyl and illegal aliens that enter the USA. Watching the Canadian government fall all over itself trying to fake an exuberant pride in their Canadian-ness, even as they continue to turn their country into an Indian colony and treat their own White Canadian population like a bunch of expendable paypigs has been enlightening, to say the least. Obviously, what’s driving the reaction is not a genuine love of country or people, but loyalty to the transnational elite that is piqued at recently being disempowered in the USA.

In all of this, it’s important to remember that the enemies here, the people who deserve our ire and derision, are not the peoples of Canada, the UK, the European countries. It is the transnational clique and their progressive Left hangers-on, the same people who were until very recently doing the exact same things to the American people, too. We need to be very clear that regular, everyday Americans and regular, everyday Frenchmen, Germans, Canadians, Italians, and all the rest are on the same side here. We have the same enemy. The European and other peoples are victims of their own governments, first and foremost. I mean, their own governments are now formally making them eat the bugs as part of their anti-human green agenda, just to give one example.

Tech enshittification continues

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Gioia notes that even the world’s biggest search engine provider is doing almost everything it can to make your search experiences worse and worse:

Almost everything in the digital world is turning into its opposite.

  • Social media platforms now prevent people from having a social life.
  • ChatGPT makes you less likely to chat with anybody.
  • Relationship apps make it harder for couples to form lasting relationships.
  • Health and wellness websites make it almost impossible to find reliable health advice — instead peddling products of dubious efficacy.
  • Product review sites now prevent people from reading impartial reviews by actual users of the product, instead operating as pay-for-play vehicles.
  • Etc. etc. etc.

You can often tell by the name. PayPal will never pay you a penny, and it’s certainly not your pal. Microsoft Teams only works if you stay away from your team. If you keep using Safari, you will never go on an actual Safari.

But the worst reversal is happening with search engines. They now prevent you from searching.

I’ve known Google up close and personal from the start. I initially found the company quirky and endearing — but those days ended long ago. The company is now clueless and creepy.

Almost every day I read some ugly news story about Google. Here are a few headlines from a typical week:

This company goes out of its ways to do mischief. Messing with people is in its DNA.

Meanwhile, its base business is degrading at an alarming rate. The company doesn’t seem to care.

In a strange turnaround, search engines don’t want you to search for anything. That’s because searching leads you on a journey — and Google doesn’t want you to leave their platform.

The search engine was invented as your gateway to the web. The inventors of this technology tried to index every page on the Internet — so that you could find anything and everything.

That was an exciting era. Search engines were like train stations or airports. They took you all over the world.

At Google today, the goal is the exact opposite. You never leave the station.

Techies once described the Internet as a digital highway. But we need a different metaphor nowadays. Web platforms want to trap you on their app, and keep you there forever.

So, instead of a digital highway, we have a digital roach motel. They let the roaches check in — but not check out.

Firefly and the End of Serenity

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Feral Historian
Published 29 Mar 2023

Serenity did an admirable job of wrapping up Firefly after the series was cancelled. But the ending, which depends on the idea that exposing government misdeeds forces change, doesn’t work today. Serenity‘s ending is premised on the idea that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” but the last few years have illustrated that we’re dealing with sunlight-resistant corruption these days.

00:00 Intro
00:24 Backstory
01:27 Chimerica
02:08 Unification
03:37 Secrets
05:12 Serenity‘s Ending

February 19, 2025

Europe’s moral leaders stand strong against grotesque American fascism

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

You have to hand it to the great and the good of Europe … they sure can find every. last. rake. to step on as they hysterically react to the slightest hint of disagreement or contradiction:

Germany is right. Opposition parties must be forbidden or firewalled. Political criticism must be criminalized. The public sphere must be firmly controlled by government, with guardrails against disagreement and heterodoxy. If we don’t do these things, we might descend into authoritarianism.

Margaret Brennan’s bizarre response to JD Vance’s speech in Munich — free speech? but that’s the weapon the Nazis used to commit the Holocaust! — wasn’t mere ignorance or accident. It’s a maneuver. You’re going to see more of it, in an urgent wave of moral inversion. Case in point, from the New Republic today:

Remember that Vance said things like this:

    The good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear.

    And I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still. Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organisers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don’t have to agree with everything or anything that people say. But when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them …

    I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people.

So governments should live in dialogue with the populations they govern; citizens should speak freely; banning or limiting political parties makes society less free and less open. From start to finish, Vance spoke for liberty and openness, for free expression and societies organized through unfettered debate.

The calculated response — the calculated response, a deliberate deflection — is: Oh no, he’s saying we should turn into Nazis! Look at the subhed to the thing in the New Republic: arguing for freedom is aligning ourselves with international fascism.

Openness is genocide. Freedom is fascism. Speech is violence. Free societies arrest people for saying the wrong thing. Free speech — you mean like ADOLF HITLER!?!?

Read the piece in the New Republic, and look closely at Michael Tomasky’s language, which is full of Stasi-adjacent framing: “The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has been declared a ‘suspected extremist’ organization by the German domestic intelligence agency.”

HBO’s Rome – Ep 4 “Stealing from Saturn” – History and Story

Filed under: Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 28 Aug 2024

Vidcaps taken from the dvd collection and copyright belongs to the respective makers and channels.
Transcript

February 18, 2025

QotD: The soft sexism of low expectations

Filed under: Health, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If a woman has spent her life marinating in the left-wing feminist subculture, a few things are highly likely to be true:

  • She’s been told she’s great — fabulous! — just the way she is.
  • She’s been taught to dismiss all push-back as misogynistic.
  • She’s been assured that she’s entitled to success — and that any failures to achieve said success are the fault of men.
  • She’s been trained to demand that these dastardly men — who are totes holding her back — kindly step aside and let her take the trophy — whether she’s actually earned it or not.

You might think I’m being unfair here, but frankly? I don’t agree. Given all the stuff I’ve read in the news for the past decade plus, I believe I’m right on the money.

Everywhere I look, I see illustrations of all four of the above bullet points. I hate to keep harping on the fat acceptance movement, but really: isn’t that a textbook example of point number one? Go ahead, ladies: eff those unrealistic beauty standards and rock on with your 300 pound selves. Yas, queen, slay! (And don’t worry that you can’t make it up a single flight of stairs without getting winded. The negative impacts of extreme obesity are way over-stated, amirite?)

Then there are all the times leftists of the distaff persuasion have thrown down the poor-me-I’m-being-harassed-by-meanie-sexist-men card each time they start losing an online argument. To be sure, in the absolute dumpster fire that is internet discourse, such women probably do get burned with the occasional “die, bitch!” PM or email. But as I noted on my fan blog, men get that crap too — and oddly, I don’t see them whining about it nearly as often. (Probably because crying doesn’t work for men. Only women get picked up by the waaaaaambulance.)

And just to hit on bullets three and four: everywhere I look, I see leftists justifying moves to ease standards to give vag a hand up. Just last month, for example, it was reported that Oxford is considering removing Homer and Virgil from a foundational classics course due to “attainment gaps between male and female candidates”. Don’t buckle down and study your Latin and Greek, dears. We’ll remove that pesky obstacle for you. And oh my great and fluffy Lord, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard feminists complain about the academic weeding that goes on in engineering or computer science — because apparently, advanced math is oppressive and patriarchal. As a woman who numbers pretty good — indeed, I even teach that stuff for a living! — I headdesk so hard whenever I hear this BS that I’m surprised my skull is still intact.

Where does all this anal-smoke-blowing lead? When you’re told constantly that you should get prizes simply for being a good little girl — as leftist women are — the result is predictable: you stop developing. If you’re already Ms. Polly Perfect, well — that obviates the need for critical self-examination and the consequent moves towards self-improvement. If your naysayers are all dismissible as “women-hating men bitter over the loss of their privilege” (or as women suffering from “internalized misogyny”), then your arguments are almost certainly untested and malformed. And if people have always been clearing the road for you and shielding you from any real challenges, you’re no doubt much stupider than your competition — and much weaker.

Stephanie S., “Prizes for Good Little Girls Syndrome”, Conservative Thoughts, 2020-03-07.

February 17, 2025

A maple-flavoured DOGE? Maxime Bernier proposed this in 2020

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s both amusing and alarming seeing the kind of things the US government has been pouring money into, as the young auditors of Elon Musk’s DOGE dig into the accounts. Some folks on social media have been asking for a Canadian version of DOGE, but they’re nearly five years behind PPC leader Maxime Bernier:

Did you know that the Canadian government is spending $143,000 to help the African country of Senegal implement a “sectorial gender strategy” in its armed forces?

Or $46,793 to improve healthcare for intersex people in the Chinese province of Shandong?

What about $4.6 million to develop programs promoting a “positive masculinity” in Cuba?

There are hundreds of such crazy programs costing Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars every year to fund the Liberals’ woke ideology in other countries.

Many people on social media just found out that these programs exist last week, after they started looking for them on the website of the Government of Canada.

They were inspired by similar crazy programs that Elon Musk has unearthed with his DOGE team in Washington.

The DOGE – or Department of Government Efficiency – was created by President Trump and has already cut tens of billions of dollars in frivolous spending after only a few weeks.

I’m being asked if I support having the equivalent of a DOGE in Canada.

Not only do I support it, but I didn’t wait for Trump and Musk to do it to propose one. I did years ago!

In 2020, I stated that a PPC government would have a Minister of Government Downsizing to examine every federal program and cut or abolish everything that is inefficient, wasteful or not essential.

And speaking of DOGE, Coyote Blog shares some thoughts about some of the reasons Democrats are critical of the organization’s efforts:

… having thought about this longer, I think this is about more than just money. It is also about class. Just listen to how the cool kids in the media talk about Musk’s group of young weirdly-nicknamed geeks. This is fairly typical:

    He was speaking specifically about a Trump executive order that decrees that the Department for Government Efficiency can force federal agencies into firing four people for every new hire. “Who the hell voted for Mr. Musk?” Begala raged. “Who the hell voted for — excuse the phrase — a guy who calls himself Big Balls? A 19-year-old kid going in there and trying to fire cancer researchers and scientists and teachers and agricultural specialists. It’s, it’s appalling.”

This is moderately hilarious from a) a party who still has not told us which unelected people really were making decisions behind the curtain for a senile Joe Biden; and b) an individual (Begala) who wielded immense power and influence across all departments of the Clinton Administration. The department staffs in DC are 99.99% people who are both unelected and unconfirmed by Congress. The issue is not that they are unelected, the issue is that they are “the wrong sort”. I am reminded of the British aristocracy in the 19th century that would tolerate almost any sort of governmental incompetence or malfeasance as long as the people were “the right sort” — meaning of their class.

The mention of Victorian England reminds me of another way that class is likely involved here. In the English aristocracy the oldest son inherited the title and often all the land and income (which was entailed to the title). This left little for any additional sons, so an income had to be found somewhere for them in a profession that did not require them to sully themselves with “trade” (daughters were handled a different way, through the marriage market). Reading for the law was an acceptable profession for a son with brains, and the army or navy were outlets for many. But most families needed a way for their sons without too much brains or ability and not militarily inclined to make a living. A position in the Church was often the solution.

Modern American blue-blood parents are no different — they need a way to secure a living for their kids who won’t or can’t land a job in the modern elite career choices (law, consulting, investment banking, or a sexy startup). Unlike in Victorian times, the military or the Church are no longer preferred elite options. So what to do with your 22-year-old gender studies major? The parents need her to get an income and they need her to do it in a context that they can proudly report to their friends — Paul Begala does not want to tell his friends that his son’s job is maintaining distributor pricing lists (anyone who does not believe the latter criteria should have been at my Princeton or Harvard Business School 25th reunions).

The solution? Get them a job at a non-profit, the modern American version of going to the Church. As Arnold Kling noted once, non-profits tend to have much higher status than do for-profits. And without competition they don’t have to carry the same performance standards as for-profits. And they are incredibly susceptible to trading a position for your kid in exchange for a nice donation.

The employment rosters of non-profits and NGO’s are stuffed with the children of privilege. So much so that there are many non-profits that seem to do nothing EXCEPT employ and pay the travel expenses of 20-something kids from rich and/or influential families. I have been writing about the non-profit scam for years. As I wrote then:

    From my direct experience, I would go further. There is a tranche (I don’t know how large) of non-profits that are close to outright scams, providing most of their benefits to their managers and employees rather to anyone outside the organization. These benefits include 1) a salary with few performance expectations; 2) expense-paid parties and travel; 3) myriad virtue-signalling opportunities; 4) opportunities to build personal networks. This isn’t just criticizing theoretical institutions — people I know are in such jobs in these organizations.

The spending that DOGE is going after at USAID and other departments likely threatens the income of a number of under-qualified elite kids. So I will update my meme:

February 15, 2025

“Trump marks the overdue end of the Long Twentieth Century”

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

At The Upheaval, N.S. Lyons suggests that the arrival of Donald Trump, version 2.0, may finally end the era we’ve been living in since immediately after the end of WW2:

The 125 years between the French Revolution in 1789 and the outbreak of WWI in 1914 was later described as the “Long Nineteenth Century”. The phrase recognized that to speak of “the nineteenth century” was to describe far more than a specific hundred-year span on the calendar; it was to capture the whole spirit of an age: a rapturous epoch of expansion, empire, and Enlightenment, characterized by a triumphalist faith in human reason and progress. That lingering historical spirit, distinct from any before or after, was extinguished in the trenches of the Great War. After the cataclysm, an interregnum that ended only with the conclusion of WWII, everything about how the people of Western civilization perceived and engaged with the world – politically, psychologically, artistically, spiritually – had changed.

R.R. Reno opens his 2019 book Return of the Strong Gods by quoting a young man who laments that “I am twenty-seven years old and hope to live to see the end of the twentieth century”. His paradoxical statement captures how the twentieth century has also extended well past its official sell-by date in the year 2000. Our Long Twentieth Century had a late start, fully solidifying only in 1945, but in the 80 years since its spirit has dominated our civilization’s whole understanding of how the world is and should be. It has set all of our society’s fears, values, and moral orthodoxies. And, through the globe-spanning power of the United States, it has shaped the political and cultural order of the rest of the world as well.

The spirit of the Long Twentieth could not be more different from that which preceded it. In the wake of the horrors inflicted by WWII, the leadership classes of America and Europe understandably made “never again” the core of their ideational universe. They collectively resolved that fascism, war, and genocide must never again be allowed to threaten humanity. But this resolution, as reasonable and well-meaning as it seemed at the time, soon became an all-consuming obsession with negation.

Hugely influential liberal thinkers like Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno helped convince an ideologically amenable post-war establishment that the fundamental source of authoritarianism and conflict in the world was the “closed society”. Such a society is marked by what Reno dubs “strong gods”: strong beliefs and strong truth claims, strong moral codes, strong relational bonds, strong communal identities and connections to place and past – ultimately, all those “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies”.

Now the unifying power of the strong gods came to be seen as dangerous, an infernal wellspring of fanaticism, oppression, hatred, and violence. Meaningful bonds of faith, family, and above all the nation were now seen as suspect, as alarmingly retrograde temptations to fascism. Adorno, who set the direction of post-war American psychology and education policy for decades, classified natural loyalties to family and nation as the hallmarks of a latent “authoritarian personality” that drove the common man to xenophobia and führer worship. Popper, in his sweepingly influential 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, denounced the idea of national community entirely, labeling it as disastrous “anti-humanitarian propaganda” and smearing anyone who dared cherish as special his own homeland and history as a dangerous “racialist”. For such intellectuals, any definitive claim to authority or hierarchy, whether between men, morals, or metaphysical truths, seemed to stand as a mortal threat to peace on earth.

The great project of post-war establishment liberalism became to tear down the walls of the closed society and banish its gods forever. To be erected on its salted ground was an idyllic but exceptionally vague vision of an “open society” animated by peaceable weak gods of tolerance, doubt, dialogue, equality, and consumer comfort. This politically and culturally dominant “open society consensus” drew on theorists like Adorno and Popper to advance a program of social reforms intended to open minds, disenchant ideals, relativize truths, and weaken bonds.

As Reno catalogues in detail, new approaches to education, psychology, and management sought to relativize truths, elevate “critical thinking” over character, vilify collective loyalties, cast doubt on hierarchies, break down all boundaries and borders, and free individuals from the “repression” of all moral and relational duties. Aspiration to a vague universal humanitarianism soon became the only higher good that it was socially acceptable to aim for other than pure economic growth.

[…]

The Long Twentieth Century has been characterized by these three interlinked post-war projects: the progressive opening of societies through the deconstruction of norms and borders, the consolidation of the managerial state, and the hegemony of the liberal international order. The hope was that together they could form the foundation for a world that would finally achieve peace on earth and goodwill between all mankind. That this would be a weak, passionless, undemocratic, intricately micromanaged world of technocratic rationalism was a sacrifice the post-war consensus was willing to make.

That dream didn’t work out though, because the strong gods refused to die.

Update, 17 February: Welcome Instapundit readers! Thanks for dropping by. Please do look around at some of my other posts! I think the last time I got linked by Instapundit was back in 2008/9 just before I moved to the current location. Please do read the entire N.S. Lyons post, as this is just a taster of the full essay!

QotD: The absurdly high early expectations for genetic research

Filed under: Health, Media, Quotations, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

For decades, people talked about “the gene for height”, “the gene for intelligence”, etc. Was the gene for intelligence on chromosome 6? Was it on the X chromosome? What happens if your baby doesn’t have the gene for intelligence? Can they still succeed?

Meanwhile, the responsible experts were saying traits might be determined by a two-digit number of genes. Human Genome Project leader Francis Collins estimated that there were “about twelve genes” for diabetes, and “all of them will be discovered in the next two years”. Quanta Magazine reminds us of a 1999 study which claimed that “perhaps more than fifteen genes” might contribute to autism. By the early 2000s, the American Psychological Association was a little more cautious, was saying intelligence might be linked to “dozens – if not hundreds” of genes.

The most recent estimate for how many genes are involved in complex traits like height or intelligence is approximately “all of them” – by the latest count, about twenty thousand. From this side of the veil, it all seems so obvious. It’s hard to remember back a mere twenty or thirty years ago, when people earnestly awaited “the gene for depression”. It’s hard to remember the studies powered to find genes that increased height by an inch or two. It’s hard to remember all the crappy p-hacked results that okay, we found the gene for extraversion, here it is! It’s hard to remember all the editorials in The Guardian about how since nobody had found the gene for IQ yet, genes don’t matter, science is fake, and Galileo was a witch.

And even remembering those times, they seem incomprehensible. Like, really? Only a few visionaries considered the hypothesis that the most complex and subtle of human traits might depend on more than one protein? Only the boldest revolutionaries dared to ask whether maybe cystic fibrosis was not the best model for the entirety of human experience?

Scott Alexander, “The Omnigenic Model As Metaphor For Life”, Slate Star Codex, 2018-09-13.

February 14, 2025

“Over half of all Germans now find themselves on ‘the right’ and urgently require democratic reeducation”

Filed under: Germany, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ah, poor German democracy … you guessed it, once again it’s hanging by a thread as protests against the extremely extreme extreme right (the AfD) have now grown to include protests against the merely extreme extreme right (the CDU and CSU):

“We are the cordon sanitaire – no cooperation with the AfD”: the banner leading the Berlin protest against AfD and CDU on 2 February, which was financed in part by the German taxpayer and arranged by semi-affiliated apron organisations of the governing Green and Social Democrat parties of Germany.

All the activists are out in force.

Every day there are new protests “against the right”, and by “the right” they do not merely mean Alternative für Deutschland and the one-in-five Germans who vote for them, as was the case last year at this time. Since Friedrich Merz stepped over the cordon sanitaire at the beginning of this month, “the right” now also includes the centre-right CDU and CSU parties. Over half of all Germans now find themselves on “the right” and urgently require democratic reeducation. What is worse, it is not just crazy pink-haired activists and septum-pierced Antifa who want to do the reeducating, oh no. It is the government itself; the activists are merely their agents.

According to taz, 500,000 right-thinking Germans took to the streets this past weekend to combat the out-of-bounds radical views held by 52% of everybody. Perhaps 200,000 or 250,000 or 320,000 turned out for the massive “Democracy Needs You” protest in Munich on Saturday. A further 35,000 people “warned against a shift to the right” in Bremen, the absurd “Grannies against the Right” brought 24,000 people to the streets of Hannover, and another 14,000 denounced “right-wing extremism” in Marburg. There were also protests throughout Nordrhein-Westfalen, in Wuppertal, Aachen, Duisburg, Gütersloh, Gummersbach and Euskirchen. Yesterday 15,000 showed up to protest an AfD event in Freiburg; they were less than peaceful. And that is just what I found by scanning a few headlines. I could easily expand this paragraph into an entire post because they are protesting everywhere and all the time “against the right” these days.

I must emphasise again the extremely expansive notion of “the right” that is in play at these protests. Basically everyone who is not on the left – and particularly everyone who does not vote for the Greens or the Social Democrats (SPD) – presently attracts the activists’ ire. That is very interesting, because we are in the final stages of an election campaign and the Greens and the SPD are the only parties in government. Could it be that the Greens and the SPD are using the substantial resources of the German state to call forth massive street protests against all the Germans who are not planning to vote for them?

Yes, in fact that is exactly how it could be:

    When 160,000 demonstrators turned out to protest on behalf of the cordon sanitaire on the first weekend in February, and organisers projected the words “All Berlin hates the CDU” onto the Victory Column, the red-green federal government provided financial support. The rally was co-sponsored from the coffers of the federal budget … indirectly and in two ways. As in many German cities, the organiser was the association Campact. Campact itself does not receive government funds. Yet they are the primary stakeholder of the nonprofit HateAid, which receives funds from the Ministry for Family Affairs. Since 2020, HateAid has received a total of almost 2.5 million Euros from the “Live Democracy” project, and their funding has just been extended. According to the Ministry for Family Affairs, HateAid can expect 424,823 Euros this year for its work against online hate speech.

    Thousands also took to the streets in Dresden and Leipzig to protest CDU plans for migration policy. In both cities, the SPD and the Greens indirectly sponsored the rallies with taxpayer money, this time through the Workers’ Welfare Association (AWO). This association enjoys the favour of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Family Affairs. The AWO received tens of thousands of Euros … in 2024. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AWO state association received 90,043 Euros from the Ministry of Family Affairs in 2025, among other things from the ‘Live Democracy’ project …

    Paus’s ministry also provides financial support to many of the organisers of demonstrations in Schleswig-Holstein. This year, a total of 1.525 million Euros will flow … The municipalities divide the money equally among themselves, with each receiving 140,000 Euros to form local “partnerships for democracy”. Many of the sponsored organisations have sponsored demonstrations on behalf of the cordon sanitaire. In Kiel, the Green-financed “Central Education and Advice Centre for Migrants” … called for a protest in front of the CDU headquarters, in Lübeck the “Lübeck Refugee Forum” did the same …

All of this is to varying degrees illegal. Non-profit organisations, which receive tax-deductible contributions from supporters, are bound to political neutrality. Nor can the government finance (directly or otherwise) campaign events against the political opposition. Since 2021, however, in the name of defending democracy, the traffic light coalition have called into being an absolute jungle of NGOs to intimidate voters, censor the internet and riot on the streets against parliamentary votes. Their semi-affiliated activist cadres police German politics and redefine as right-wing and forbidden whatever it is our rulers happen to disagree with at the moment.

Disarmament Talks, Budget Battles, and Student Duels – Nov 1930

Filed under: Germany, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 13 February 2025

November 1930 sees Germany caught between political instability and international disputes. Brüning fights to pass his controversial budget while Germany’s push for global disarmament meets French resistance and Nazi outrage. Meanwhile, Hitler restructures the SA and SS, student duels make headlines, and Berlin’s police chief is attacked in court.
(more…)

Trump may start paying attention to Canadian cultural protectionist polices next

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist points out just how many Canadian federal policies and programs will likely come under scrutiny by the Trump administration for their blatant protectionism against US cultural products:

My Globe and Mail op-ed argues the need for change is particularly true for Canadian digital and cultural policy. Parliamentary prorogation ended efforts at privacy, cybersecurity and AI reforms and U.S. pressure has thrown the future of a series of mandated payments – digital service taxes, streaming payments and news media contributions – into doubt. But the Trump tariff escalation, which now extends to steel and aluminum as well as the prospect of reviving the original tariff plan in a matter of weeks, signals something far bigger that may ultimately render current Canadian digital and cultural policy unrecognizable.

Our cultural frameworks are largely based on decades-old policies premised on marketplace protections and mandated support payments. This included foreign ownership restrictions in the cultural sector and requirements that broadcasters contribute a portion of their revenues to support Canadian content production.

As we moved from an analog to digital world, the government simply extended those policies to the digital realm. But with Mr. Trump appearing to call out what he views to be Canadian protectionist policies in sensitive sectors such as banking ownership, the cultural and digital sectors may be next.

If so, there are no shortage of long-standing policies that tilt the playing field in favour of Canadians that could spark some uncomfortable conversations.

Why do U.S. companies face ownership restrictions in the telecom and broadcast sectors? Why are Canadian broadcasters permitted to block U.S. television signals in order to capture increased advertising revenue? Why do Canadian content rules exclude U.S. companies from owning productions featuring predominantly Canadian talent?

The Canadian response that this is how it has always been is unlikely to persuade Mr. Trump.

Canadian policies premised on “making web giants pay” may also be non-starters under Mr. Trump. For the past five years, the Canadian government seemingly welcomed the opportunity to sabre rattle with U.S. internet companies. This led to mandated payments for streaming services to support Canadian film, television and music production; link taxes that targeted Meta and Google to help Canadian news outlets; and the multibillion-dollar retroactive digital services tax that is primarily aimed at U.S. tech giants.

Not only have those policies raised consumer affordability and marketplace competition concerns, they have also emerged as increasingly contentious trade issues. If the trade battles with the U.S. continue, the pressure to scale back the policies will mount.

Beyond rethinking established cultural and digital policies both new and old, the bigger changes may come from re-evaluating the competitive impact of policies that rely heavily on regulation just as the U.S. prioritizes economic growth through deregulation. Proposed Canadian privacy, online harms and AI rules have all relied heavily on increased regulation, looking to Europe as the model.

For example, consider the Canadian approach to AI regulation in the now-defunct Artificial Intelligence and Data Act. It specifically referenced the European Union’s regulatory system, which establishes extensive regulatory requirements for high-risk AI systems and bans some AI systems altogether.

However, the European approach is not the only game in town. Mr. Trump moved swiftly to cancel the former Biden administration’s executive order on AI regulation, signalling that the U.S. will prioritize deregulation in pursuit of global AI leadership. Further, the arrival of DeepSeek, the Chinese answer to ChatGPT, took the world by storm and served notice that U.S. AI dominance is by no means guaranteed.

The competing approaches – U.S.-style lightweight regulation that favours economic growth against a more robust European regulatory model that emphasizes AI guardrails and public protections – will force difficult policy choices that Canada has thus far avoided.

QotD: “Galentine’s Day”

Filed under: Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

My other moment of Argh was occasioned by younger son. No, that doesn’t mean younger son did something wrong. He didn’t. It’s more that younger son told me about something. (Oh, dear Lord, why does he do that?) and what he told me about was that some show introduced the concept of “Galentine’s” on the 13th. This is a day for “ladies to celebrate ladies”. What was driving younger son bananas (with a side of kiwi) is that he seeing all his female friends fall into this.

The idea is frankly loony. Valentine’s itself is highly commercialized, but most of the time, my husband I circumvent it by having walks together, or just watching a movie together. However, a day to celebrate being a couple is useful (and it wasn’t proclaimed by some government. In fact, I’m fairly sure what it is in the US grew organically, because it’s not the same anywhere else. In Portugal it’s considered “boyfriend/girlfriend day” but it mostly amounts to some kissing and maybe flowers. Or it did in my day.) Trust me, in the years of raising toddlers, any time to remember yes, you’re in love, and what brought you together is important.

But Galentine? What the actual heck? It’s not bonding, and it’s not building a relationship that is a cornerstone of society. No. It’s … putting up lists of your friends who are female and celebrating them BECAUSE THEY’RE FEMALE. This is something they were born, and can’t help being, and … what are we celebrating, precisely?

It’s not that I object to “ugly/awkward girls get a day too.” No. It’s the undertones of it. It’s the “It’s just as good to be a woman as a couple (you know, the future would beg to differ) and how being a woman is something you should celebrate because … because … because … I don’t know? Because we have vaginas?

Picture guys saying that being a man is something to celebrate, because … they have penises? Mind you, I’m a big fan of both men and their ah implement, but seriously? It would be laughable. And celebrating because you’re a woman is equally laughable.

Mind you, I’m probably the voice crying in the wilderness in the days of pussy hats and women marching around with signs painted with vulvas or proudly proclaiming they have a vulva, but it seems to me if what makes you special is the non-thinking thing between your legs, you’re doing life wrong, you’re doing equality wrong and MOST importantly, you’re doing SPECIAL wrong.

Sarah Hoyt, “Dance To The Music”, According to Hoyt, 2017-02-14.

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