If enough women decide to mob on some unfortunate outside their group, they may well turn physically violent and the beating will not stop once the point is made. It will stop when the target of their wrath is dead or nearly dead. Women don’t really have much of an “off switch” when we move into physical violence out of anger.
So what would a world made up totally of women really be like? It would be tyrannical beyond belief. No one would be willing to speak against the accepted narrative unless they were willing to be unpersoned or killed. Think of a mix between 1984, the very worst social aspects of socialist regimes, and the Borg. There would be constant pushing for position, usually by starting whisper campaigns or setting someone above oneself up to be badly embarrassed. Look at the SJWs of today’s world and see how they operate. That’s what it would look like, writ large across the entire planet. They attack anyone outside the group who doesn’t comply with their demands, and if someone inside the group says a single word out of line according to the ever-shifting standards the entire group turns on them without mercy. The only way to get back in their good graces is to loudly proclaim your “sin” and accept their abuse until they get bored of you. Even afterward, you’ll forever be “tainted” with the sin of noncompliance.
When you write your books and send them out into the world, please stop writing women as soft, cuddly pacifists. We aren’t. Kipling was completely right about the female of the species being the more dangerous sex. He was also right about the price of letting women control society. If any thinking individualist finds themselves in a society run by women, may God have mercy on their souls because those women will have none at all.
“outofthedarkness”, guest posting at According to Hoyt, 2017-08-09.
August 29, 2019
August 28, 2019
The political football of “mass” immigration in the Canadian federal election campaign
Recently a registered third-party (under Canadian election rules) paid to have billboards put up in major cities that appeared to be from Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada:
A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434c
Colby Cosh discusses the issues raised:
I offer sarcastic congratulations to everyone who gave Maxime Bernier the stupid controversy he wanted over the “Say NO to mass immigration” billboard, bearing his image, that briefly appeared in a few Canadian cities and was taken down in a hurry Monday morning. The billboards were purchased from Pattison Outdoor Advertising by a third-party supporter of Bernier’s People’s Party. The company’s initial response to the resulting outcry was to observe that the message of the billboard complied with advertising standards; it did not contain any hateful, disparaging, or discriminatory language.
“We take a neutral position on ads that comply with the ASC (Advertising Standards Canada) Code as we believe Canadians do not want us to be the judge or arbiter of what the public can or cannot see,” was Pattison’s original statement in the face of controversy. (Most everybody, including the company, seems to have missed the point that election advertising is explicitly “excluded from the application” of the Code on the grounds that political expression deserves the highest degree of deference; the Code does say, for what it’s worth, that “Canadians are entitled to expect” that such advertising respects the underlying principles.)
[…]
The question I have for objectors and denouncers of the billboard is how they think it could have been rewritten, expressing the same underlying idea, so as to be acceptable. If the unpleasant-sounding word “mass” were replaced with “large-scale,” would there have been less of a ruction? Maybe any objection to prospective levels of immigration to Canada is to be regarded as inherently racist and hateful, even when no racist or hateful language is used.
If that is the case, it is perfectly predictable that the People’s Party will exploit this and cry “mob censorship,” and public polls on immigration suggest they will have some success, in case recent history everywhere didn’t offer enough of a hint. Moreover, we are left with an awkward question how any limit upon or criteria for immigration, any government immigration policy per se, can be justified at all. What, indeed, can be the objection to “mass immigration”? Who will have the courage to put up a “Say YES to mass immigration” billboard?
QotD: The secret power of Quebec separatists that Western separatists lack
Colby Cosh, “Advice on Western separatism: don’t take it any more seriously than it takes itself”, National Post, 2019-07-26.
August 27, 2019
So much for nil nisi bonum
The old Latin phrase De mortuis nihil nisi bonum encourages us to only speak well of the dead. The recent death of libertarian billionaire David Koch has brought forth a torrent of vituperation from many people in media and politics, as James Piereson and Naomi Schafer Riley record:
David Koch speaking at the Defending the American Dream Summit in Columbus, Ohio, 21 August 2015.
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons.
“Yesterday David Koch of the zillionaire Koch brothers died … of prostate cancer. I guess I’m going to have to reevaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer.” That was Bill Maher last Friday night, joking before his approving audience. Maher went on to say, “The Amazon is burning up. I’m glad he’s dead.” Maher is not known for his kindness toward those with whom he disagrees. In that sense, he reflects the thinking of a growing number of progressives and leftists who openly despise conservatives and libertarians. David Koch, along with his brother Charles, have for decades been targets of harsh rhetoric from the far Left.
What is it about David Koch that inspired such hatred? “We live in the world that he helped build, and it is on fire,” wrote Sarah Jones in New York, denouncing Koch’s “monstrous legacy.” In Esquire, Charles Pierce writes: “Except for his surviving brother, Charles, no man had a worse effect on American politics since the death of John C. Calhoun. Every malignancy currently afflicting us can be traced in one way or another into their wallets, and that’s not even to mention the lasting damage they’ve done to the planet as a whole.”
This is the kind of language that religious cults reserve for heretics and apostates — and in many ways, David and Charles Koch were blasphemers to the liberal orthodoxy. They believed in smaller government and thus criticized the welfare state, excessive taxation, and a great deal of government regulation. At the same time, they criticized America’s wars abroad, along with high levels of defense spending, and were sympathetic to the causes of gay rights and gay marriage. They were consistent in their views across a range of issues, antagonizing liberals but also vexing conservatives. The claim that David Koch was a reflexive right-winger is a caricature of his beliefs.
The Kochs believed in smaller government. Whether it was gay marriage or land wars in Asia, they consistently argued that less government intervention would produce freer and happier people. Their support for drug legalization and abortion rights irked plenty of conservatives, but it drove few over the edge as their support for lower taxes and greater school choice did for liberals. Perhaps nothing irked liberals more, though, than the Kochs’ fight for less environmental regulation. Blaming Charles and David Koch for singlehandedly destroying the rainforests or raising the temperature of the earth seems to be a common theme among critics — an attribution of immense power beyond the capacity of any man or family or company.
August 24, 2019
Remy: All My Loving (Beatles Parody)
ReasonTV
Published on 23 Aug 2019Remy discovers the hysterical, shrieking crowds are here for the entitlements.
Written and Performed by Remy
Produced and Edited by Austin Bragg
Music tracks and mastering by Ben Karlstrom
——————Reason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.
—————-
LYRICS:
Does adulthood dismay you?
Vote me and I’ll pay you
You won’t have to grow up it’s true
All your bills will be paid
Your adulthood delayed
And I’ll give all this money to youBob commuted to college
For discounted knowledge
So large debts he would not accrue
Lived at home, did some chores
Now he’ll also pay yours
Cuz I’ll give all his money to youAll this money
You will get from Bob
All this money
If I get this jobAll your work wages risen
Your debts all forgiven
Your childcare will be paid for too
Want free parental leave
Just takes one vote for me
And I’ll give all this money to youAll Bob’s money
I will give to you
All Bob’s money
If I win it’s true
All Bob’s money
All Bob’s money
All Bob’s money
I will give to you
Prime Minister Dressup versus the Milk Dud
Barbara Kay on the most recent pre-campaign attack by the federal Liberals on Andrew “The Milk Dud” Scheer:
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
The Liberals know they are going into the coming federal election with their leader, Justin Trudeau, weighed down by the heavy baggage of the SNC-Lavalin debacle and the India Tickle Trunk Tour, amongst many other embarrassments. So the Conservatives had to expect some desperation moves to cast their leader, Andrew Scheer, in what the Libs consider an equally bad light.
And right on cue, the Libs unearthed a 2005 video of Andrew Scheer explaining to the House of Commons why he was personally opposed to the legalization of gay marriage.
We would do well to remember that the words Scheer spoke then constituted the belief system of 99% of the planet earth, including Barack Obama, who flipped on the issue when it became politically safe to do so. Gay marriage wasn’t even on the horizon of most countries in the West, nor is it legal yet in many western countries. (And as former NDP leader Thomas Mulcair pointed out in a CTV interview, Canadians would also do well to remember that in 1995 Ralph Goodale didn’t believe gays should even have the right to civil unions, let alone marriage.)
Scheer has no intention of revisiting gay marriage politically. It’s settled law, and he has given no indication that he considers it less than settled. Bringing up what he had to say in 2005 may be politically advantageous as a distraction, but it is unfair, while Conservative attacks on Trudeau for gaffes he has made and is still making as prime minister are perfectly fair comment.
August 23, 2019
Reasons to expect an even weirder (and scarier) US election in 2020 than in 2016
At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian explains why the First World War was inevitable (because of the fecklessness of all the world leaders at the time) and then points out that the same sort of inevitability seems to be playing out in the run-up to the 2020 US elections:
Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.
In short, World War 1 was a massive, indescribably bloody dick-measuring contest between a few inbred yokels. To anyone who has met the Sons of Privilege,* or who is passingly familiar with the Peter Principle, this comes as no surprise. Hell, Lenin saw it, and a guy with his egg head further up his own ass you’ll never find.** All you have to do is look at the people, not the paper.
That’s where the modern political landscape gets so terrifying. Looking at the paper from the establishment Democrats’ point of view, their course of action seems obvious. And credit where it’s due, even Slow Joe Biden and Fauxcahontas are smart enough (or, more likely, have hired people who are smart enough) to see the obvious once it gets rubbed in their faces a few dozen times — Slow Joe is playing the above-it-all unifier, while Dances with Socialism has gone on a Hillary-esque “listening tour” for The Media’s benefit. Should they choose, The Media can now memory hole all the “fake Indian” stuff, and yell “racist!” at anyone who tries to dredge it back up …
… but I don’t think they’ll choose to. The human factor always wins, and the humans (using the term in its strictest biological sense) in The Media are fed up close to bursting. The mask is completely off “The Squad,” and The Media couldn’t be happier. I’m sure that, in their heart of hearts, Nancy Pelosi et al don’t have a problem with BDS, or the Green New Deal, or any of the rest of it. But flying to Israel on the taxpayer’s dime to support Palestinian terrorism just doesn’t play in Peoria, and the Establishment Dems know it. The Media, however, do not — just look at the coverage.
I’m also quite confident that Nancy et al are even, in their heart of hearts, ok with “Antifa” shooting at cops and firebombing ICE offices. Nancy, after all, came up in the heyday of Jim Jones’s San Francisco, so she’s no stranger to political violence. But The Media absolutely cream themselves over “revolutionaries.” They’ve kept this stuff under wraps so far — Nancy et al have convinced them it’ll hurt Donald Trump more than it will hurt them if they keep it bottled up — but every single person in The Media had xhzhyr first wet dream about Che Guevara. I doubt they can keep it in their pants too much longer, especially if — as seems all but certain — “Antifa” commits some gaudy, gross atrocity in the 2020 campaign season.
Nor can we discount the human factor regarding Normals. Every day brings a new insult — Twitter colluding with China to suppress democratic protests in Hong Kong while all-but-openly banning anyone to the right of Mao; gender-and-race-swapping comic book characters; anything and everything to throw sand in Normals’ faces. If Trump’s victory in 2016 was The Great Fuck You, I can’t even imagine what it’ll look like in 2020, after four more years of this stuff ramped up way past 11.
It’s not looking good, but since the idiots in charge have never even thought about looking up from the paper, the whole thing is going to catch them completely unprepared. Forget “that’s how you got Trump;” this is how you get the Somme.
* they’re like the Sons of Anarchy, but effete and usually gay.
** though he basically just stole the idea from Hobson, who, though a goofy love-the-worlder, was actually a pretty smart guy.
Loving “science”
At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian explains the differences between how ordinary people view science and many progressives “f*cking love” science:
For the benefit of younger readers: If you think Lefties Fucking Love Science(TM) now, you have no idea of the torrid affair they carried on with it back when the USSR was still a going concern. Karl Marx, of course, pretended that his sub-Hegelian flatulence was the only truly scientific world view, and his disciples have been playing along ever since. “The facts have a liberal bias,” you’d routinely be informed, by people who spent $200 to have their chakras cleansed by a Navajo shaman once every two months.
I can’t think of a better illustration of what I call (for lack of a better term) the Left’s grammar problem. Lefties tend to get nouns and verbs mixed up. “Science,” for instance. I’m not going to go all Vox Day here and start making up words, but when normal people say “science,” we generally mean it as a verb:
“Science” is what scientists do; it’s shorthand for “applying the scientific method.”
This is why, when we’re presented with a startling new find from the white coat guys — that the polar ice caps have all melted, say — we ask to see the lab work. If it’s really science, then we should be able to replicate the experiment ourselves. Or, at the very least, you should be able to show us the satellite photos…
Which nicely highlights the Left’s notion of “science.” To them, it’s a noun:
“Science” is a fixed body of knowledge; upon which “scientists” operate the way theologians work on the Bible.
What “scientists” do in the Left’s world, then, is what normal people call “hermeneutics.” This is why the bizarre phrase “the science is settled!” makes sense to Leftists. You don’t get to see God’s lab work, after all, and you’re not allowed to make up new Scriptures. To them, an ordinary person challenging a “scientist” on a point of “science” is like a layman challenging the Pope on a point of theology.
August 22, 2019
August 21, 2019
British-EU negotiations under Boris Johnson
In a speech to Slovak journalists, Sean Gabb outlines what he expects the British government to be doing about Brexit now that May has been put out to pasture and Boris Johnson is in charge:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.
Here, I come to a digression on the nature of how Britain is governed. My country is not particularly democratic. At the same time, there is no cabal of evil persons directing all events and appointments from behind the scenes. This is generally not how ruling classes operate. A more realistic model can be taken from Ian Kershaw’s analysis of the National Socialist revolution in Germany. This proceeded with limited central direction. Before 1939, the leaders were concerned mostly with foreign policy, after that with fighting a big war. Instead, the revolution was decentralised. Reliable men were put in key positions and told to “work towards the Fuhrer” – that is, to act in any situation as they might imagine Hitler himself would act. The result was often administrative chaos. The benefit was that the leadership could concentrate on what it saw as the essentials, and more local knowledge could be used in the overall revolution than would otherwise have been possible.
This is largely how things work in Britain. Our own Transformation is not driven by detailed orders from the Shadowy-Ones-on-High, but by creating a bias within every useful institution to those who are broadly in favour of the Transformation. The benefit is a constrained diversity of approaches that can be presented as a genuine diversity of opinion. The disadvantage is that executive power lies in this country where it has since 1701 – that is, in the hands of the Ministers of the Crown, who are accountable to the House of Commons. If the Prime Minister turns out to be a fool, and the other ministers are too cowardly to stab him in the back, there is no easy way to remove him.
I come at last to the Brexit strategy of the new Government. These people are not right-wing extremists who can eventually be forced to give in. Just like Theresa May, they see Brexit as a problem that needs to be solved. If they could wave a magic wand, they would roll back the calendar to 2016 and make sure that Remain won the Referendum. Or they would roll it back a little farther and make sure the Referendum was not called that year, or at all. But they cannot. Instead, they have to deal with the effects of leaving a political fool in charge for three years of the Brexit process.
Theresa May had one job after 2016. This was to produce the minimal departure I have mentioned. Instead, she negotiated a Withdrawal Agreement that caused a storm of outrage among the English. The details of what this Withdrawal Agreement contained are, again, unimportant. What does matter is that the Withdrawal Agreement was published in English on the European Commission website, and millions of us read its 585 pages. We may not have been that interested in the details of our membership. But the details of our “withdrawal” were unacceptable. She tried three times to force it through the House of Commons. Each time, a majority of some very trashy people were terrified to be seen supporting it. Anyone else less stupid would have tried something else. Instead, Theresa May treated us with open contempt. Whether or not we really cared about it, we had been asked if we wanted to remain in the European Union. Having voted “No!” we expected some show of respect for our clear instructions. We did not welcome a Brexit-in-Name-only.
At first, the damage was confined to the possibility of a Labour Government. Then, with the rise of the Brexit Party, the system as a whole moved towards a crisis of legitimacy. The European elections of the month before last were seen as the second Referendum the Remainers had demanded. It was won by the Leavers. The Conservative were crushed. Labour was humiliated. It seemed that a general election would, for the first time, produce a bloc in the House of Commons of Members opposed not only to the peripheral issue of the European Union, but also to the Transformation.
So Theresa May had to go, and she was replaced by Boris Johnson. His own inclination, I have no doubt, is to get a few cosmetic changes to the existing Withdrawal Agreement, and then tell us he is a diplomatic genius. His problem is that this will no longer do. Theresa May has left too much poison in those waters. Brexit must now be more meaningful than was at first projected. Last week, there was an election in Wales to fill a vacancy in the House of Commons – a bye-election. This should have been won by the Conservatives. Instead, the Brexit Party took enough Conservative votes to give the seat to one of the opposition parties – not the Labour Party, which did badly. The political arithmetic is that anything less than a No-Deal Brexit or a diplomatic triumph will mean a collapse of the Conservative vote at the next general election. And this will not mean a Labour Government, but political chaos and a crisis of legitimacy.
In a post at the Continental Telegraph, Alex Noble shows the quite different political trajectories of Change UK (or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) and the Brexit Party:
[Simon Jenkins in the Guardian claims that] the majority of Britain want to stay in the EU.
Is he right?
Well, the recent defectors from the main parties clearly believed he was – Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry et al abandoned their positions to form the CUKs and provide the disenfranchised British masses with the staunch Remainer party they had all been failing to demand for so long.
They came out of the blocks fast, called in favours with journalists to get favourable press coverage, and burst upon the political consciousness of Great Britain like a glitter-filled Zeppelin of cross-party europhilia.
And then … oh the humanity.
Whereas Brexit geezer Nigel Farage sauntered out of the blocks under withering crossfire from the establishment and its pet churnalists, and immediately went hypersonic – from 0% to 20% before the establishment pollsters could unlimber their clipboards and stutter their leading questions.
Up and down the country, the British voter was encouraged to overlook the Brexit Party by an establishment still traumatised by the referendum, with pollsters snidely relegating the party to the column entitled “Other” during their obfuscatory enquiries.
And the British voter seized them by the lapels and yanked them into a ferocious Brexit headbutt.
The desperate EU stooges in the Tory party, realising their puppet Treason May was fatally wounded, threw her under the bus and began their Stop Boris campaign, but all the manufactured scandalettes failed to prevent the Johnson Juggernaut from roiling over them and into Downing Street.
For now, the Brexit Party have stalled on 20% – they hold their position now like a lioness crouched in the long grass, waiting for Boris Johnson to reveal the slightest Remainer tendencies. And if he does, the catastrophic injuries he and his party will suffer will make Theresa May’s mauling look like the amuse bouche at the Marquis de Sade’s final soundproofed basement party.
August 20, 2019
Jonathan Kay listened to the whole SNC-Lavalin report so you don’t have to…
Update: Apparently the Thread Reader App only picked up the first couple of entries (it worked fine when I queued it up for publication yesterday). Here’s the text version:
I just listened to the entire ethics commissioner’s report on the SNC-Lavalin scandal while driving back from Maine. I loaded up the text in my VoiceAloud app, hit play, and the audio kept me going for 3 hours, all the way into central New York State, along the I-90….
As with any narrative, you begin to identify with certain characters. In my case, it was @Puglaas. I found it especially maddening the way everyone around her kept babbling about finding a “solution,” which was their settled euphemism for bullying her into helping SNC…
The level of condescension exhibited by everyone in and around the PMO toward @Puglaas was breathtaking. These Liberal dudes always kept pretending that they just wanted to make sure she had enough “information,” as if she were a law student, not the AG of a G7 nation …
At the same time, it was breathtaking the way SNC Lavalin was essentially able to turn the entire PMO, and major ministries, into its personal lobbying operation. Texts, emails, calls, in-person visits… it was like SNC-Lavalin had Trudeau’s PMO on retainer, like a law firm ….
I hadn’t realized SNC was able to mobilize, or attempted to mobilize, not one, not two, but THREE former SC of Canada justices on its behalf. This is the sort of blurring between corporate & govt operations that u expect in banana republics (or in the Irvings’ New Brunswick)…
The fact trudeau & those around him still pretend this is about “jobs” is…I don’t even know the word for it. The ethics comm essentially called it a lie. This was about partisan politics. How can JT say he “accepts” the report without coming to terms with this core finding?
When this scandal & election is done, we need an inquiry that gets to the bottom of the larger issue here: how a single quebec corp, one heavily impugned by its own action, was able to essential create legislation to help itself, got trudeau to ram it thru on a budget omnibus…
And then spent weeks pulling every lever in ottawa to try to override our constitutional system of govt so they could get off the hook for alleged crimes, culminating in the actual reconstitution of cabinet. SNC turned our govt into a joke. And trudeau still sez it’s about “jobs”
If yr attitude is that u dont want to educate yourself about this scandal, bcuz the only thing that matters is hating @AndrewScheer (an attitude some ppl have candidly expressed) pls reconsider. Even if u vote Liberal, the scandal exposed problems in our system that need fixing
Conservative governments have no doubt been equally solicitous to big well-connected firms. Leftists *especially*, the same ones dismissing this scandal bcuz it interferes with their elxn narrative, should be horrified that corporations are treating @Bill_Morneau & PMO as puppets
The fact that all of these Libs can bleat “jobz jobz jobz” with a straight face isnt just a symptom of the amoral cynicism of politics (tho it is that). It reflect the fact that we canadians expect that big corps will get coddled like this. We need to end it
If youre @AndrewScheer or @theJagmeetSingh, it’s fine to rake the Libs over the coals for lying to us. But all politicians lie. Tell us how you’d fix the system structurally to ensure that the PMO isn’t acting as a pro bono hanger-on to a major corporation
And if you’re a progressive activist of a certain age, go back & look at all the things @NaomiAKlein @Sheila_Copps Judie Rebick etc warned us about during the free trade battles…corporations dictating terms to elected govts. Well, guess what ? That’s what’s on display here…
In fact, one of the most tragicomic subplots here is the Libs running around in full panic bcuz SNC was about to have a board meeting the next day… Yes, that’s right: Trudeau’s PMO prioritized important legal decisions on the basis of some company’s board meeting.
Because Jobz.What’s more, the full-court press on @Puglaas in the shadow of these meetings was itself based on another lie: Libs knew SNC HQ couldnt abandon quebec (till 2024) bcuz of representations made to Caisse in regard to purchase of a UK sub. Bullshit layered on bullshit
#BecauseJobzI keep coming back to @Puglaas, & how she must have felt. How many cdns have been in a job where yr boss & his minions tried to pressure u to find an unethical “solution,” to help the boss keep his own job? then when u did what was right, u get turfed 4 not being a “team player”
This isnt just about Trudeau. One galling episode described is a meeting in which @Bill_Morneau pontificates to @Puglaas about how she doesnt have enuf “information” about econ effects of possible SNC crim conviction. @Puglaas asks Morneau if he’s done a study on it. Answer: no.
We talk a lot about toxic workplaces for women. hard not to see how the dudes who Trudeau assigned to push @Puglaas around on this file aren’t guilty of this. Their strategy was to make her feel ignorant bcuz she did the right thing. The PMO gaslit their own justice minister
There are several female Liberal MPs whom I have come to know and respect, such as @juliedabrusin @cafreeland @JulieDzerowicz. It is mortifying to watch them being forced to line up in defence of this.
As for SNC itself, I don’t really blame it for doing what it did. If u were running a company and knew you could dictate terms to a govt, why not? The lesson to other CEOs would be that if youre accused of a crime, just threaten to lay ppl off and move your HQ. Problem solved.
final note…u can see y the Libs are going hard with demagoguery about @AndrewScheer being white supremacist-adjacent. A traditional leftist claim was that Tories would sell out to corporate interests. That’s a hard claim for Libs to make now. bcuz the Libs have already done it
It’s been a day since I wrote this thread, & some commenters are saying the SNC scandal shows Trudeau & the Libs are unscrupulous people. But I dont think that’s it. I have met some of these protagonists, and have found them to be *more* public-minded than the average citizen…
As noted in a response to @staceylnewman, the problem is that politics changes ppl. There’s a chilling quote in the report, from a meeting, where a Lib says to @Puglaas (paraphrasing here) “It doesn’t matter how great our policies are. We need to get re-elected to implement them”
To me, that sums everything up: The means justifies the ends, bcuz the ends (the “good” side wins power, & the “bad” side loses) are taken to have existential importance. That’s the myth that leads all politicians astray. If JT just admitted this, I bet many would forgive him
August 19, 2019
The Peterloo Massacre
In Spiked on Friday, Brendan O’Neill marked the 200th anniversary of a brutal suppression of thousands of protestors demanding the right to vote in Britain:
The Peterloo Massacre by Richard Carlile (1790-1843)
To Henry Hunt, Esq., as chairman of the meeting assembled in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, sixteenth day of August, 1819, and to the female Reformers of Manchester and the adjacent towns who were exposed to and suffered from the wanton and fiendish attack made on them by that brutal armed force, the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, this plate is dedicated by their fellow labourer, Richard Carlile: a coloured engraving that depicts the Peterloo Massacre (military suppression of a demonstration in Manchester, England by cavalry charge on August 16, 1819 with loss of life) in Manchester, England.
All the poles from which banners are flying have Phrygian caps or liberty caps on top. Not all the details strictly accord with contemporary descriptions; the banner the woman is holding should read: Female Reformers of Roynton — “Let us die like men and not be sold like slaves”.
Manchester Library Services via Wikimedia Commons.
Today is the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre, when working people in Manchester were attacked and murdered by cavalry forces for daring to demand the right to vote. And what is our political class doing on this anniversary of such an important event in British political history? They are plotting, tirelessly, to overthrow something that millions of working-class people, and others, voted for: Brexit. They are doing what the Peterloo butchers did, only by political means and court cases rather than with bayonets and sabres. Our current political rulers may not physically attack the masses for having the temerity to use their democratic voices — not yet, anyway — but they view us with the exact same seething, elitist contempt as those who did attack the masses in St Peter’s Field on 16 August 1819.
Around 60,000 men, women and children gathered in St Peter’s Field in Manchester 200 years ago to demand parliamentary representation. They wanted that most basic and essential democratic right: the right to vote. The teeming industrial city of Manchester had no elected MPs in parliament. The old “rotten boroughs” system meant that often sparsely populated rural areas sent MPs to the Commons, involving much patronage and sometimes even the buying of votes by wealthy aspiring politicians, while newly industrialised cities full of the growing urban working classes had little to no political representation. Against a background of post-Napoleonic Wars economic depression and a fast-spreading radical desire for meaningful democratic change, the tens of thousands of marchers arrived in St Peter’s Field with a clear demand: let us vote, let us speak.
What happened next is well known. They were attacked by cavalry forces. Troops on horseback wielded sabres against the democratic crowd. They slashed and stabbed, killing 18 people. Around 500 were injured. The slaughter was given the name “Peterloo” as an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo that took place four years earlier, in 1815. The bourgeoisie’s assault on the working-class democrats of Manchester had a deep impact on the radical psyche. New movements emerged in subsequent years, including the Chartists, the working-class movement for democratic representation. But it would be decades before the right to vote had been established across society. In 1867 some working-class men got the right to vote. In 1918, all men and some women got the right to vote. In 1928, finally all women got the vote. The General Election of 1929, 110 years after the march to St Peter’s Field, was the first election in which all adults had the right to vote.
The 200th anniversary of this bloody assault on working-class democrats ought to be a major occasion. It should be a reminder of the incredible, heroic sacrifices earlier generations made to secure people’s right to express themselves, to vote, and to see their votes be enacted. And yet while some in the political and media class will today pay lip service to the heroes of St Peter’s Field and express regret about the massacre of 18 of them, most of the elites will be too busy to do anything of the kind. Busy doing what? Trying to override and crush the votes of 17.4million people, which includes millions of working-class people and eight million women. It is a genuinely alarming and revealing moment: the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre arrives and the political set is engaged in an effective coup against the people; in a war against “No Deal Brexit” (which really just means a war against Brexit); in a concerted effort to force the ignorant public, as they see us, to vote for a second time and to give the “right” answer on this occasion.
UBI: threat or menace?
At Samizdata, Samizdata Illuminatus outlines the arguments for some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Negative Income Tax (NIT) and argues that it’s a terrible idea that should not be implemented anywhere:
Cartoon that appeared with Michael K. Spencer’s article “Is Universal Basic Income really a solution?” at https://medium.com/@Michael_Spencer/is-universal-basic-income-really-a-solution-c0d6d95f100e
For those that are not familiar with the term, UBI (Universal Basic Income) means, roughly, “the government should guarantee everyone some minimum level of income whether they work or not”.
The notion began simply enough. Some economists observed that there are a myriad of intersecting government programs for the poor (in many countries, dozens) which distort behaviour in horrible ways and which cost a fortune in overhead to administer. This is where the problem of UBI begins, in the hubris of the armchair philosopher. “What if”, these economists asked, “we can’t get rid of the dole entirely (even though that would be better) but we could at least make it efficient by replacing the entire morass with a single program, say a negative income tax?”
Trained to explore ideas (no matter how bad) for a living, said academic economists then vigorously explored this impossible hypothetical world in which they could not get rid of the dole but could somehow get politicians to perfectly implement their hypothetical improved alternative, and proceeded to write lots of papers about it.
Again, this academic musing was already a utopian impossibility, for in the real world, there are interests that would act to block the elimination of existing welfare schemes and insist that the new scheme be added to the current ones rather than replacing them. This sort of thing is routine, of course; originally, VAT schemes were thought of by academic economists as a less distorting replacement for income taxes but ended up added in addition.
The interest groups arrayed against replacement of existing welfare schemes range from the bureaucrats whose job it is to administer said schemes (and who for whom “efficiency” means unemployment), to the vast range of contractors employed in providing benefits of one sort or another, to the politicians who get votes and power in exchange for largesse paid for with other people’s money, to the current recipients of existing benefit schemes who will correctly reason that the notion behind “efficiency” is not to increase their benefits. There’s no advantage in replacement for any member of the existing system, and thus, it was a non-starter to begin with.
This did not, however, prevent many people from falling in love with the idea, as wouldn’t-it-be-ever-so-elegant-if-it-could-happen so often trumps this-is-reality in the minds of those saying “what if” over a pint or seven late in the evening at the pub next to the economics department offices.
Oh, and of course, a form of the negative income tax was created in the United States under the name of the “earned income tax credit”; as might have been predicted in advance, it was added to existing welfare programs rather than in any way replacing them.
From this simple yet benighted beginning as a completely unrealistic thought experiment, the idea of UBI gained traction and then, as most cancers do, developed a mutant and even more virulent cell line, one that allowed it to spread and grow in the minds not only of leftists (who are already inclined towards redistribution of all sorts) but those on the right who are inclined to view ordinary people as useless.
We are now informed that UBI is a solution to a different problem as well. We are informed, in not-so-hushed tones, that the rise of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence will soon automate away most jobs, resulting in a vast class of people who will be unemployable in any trade whatsoever, which will consequently lead to mass unemployment, and that said permanently unemployable people will starve to death if we don’t find ways to provide them with income.
We are told we thus must guarantee a minimum income for all, without regard to whether they are capable of earning a living on their own, or we’ll have riots on our hands once AI based systems become ubiquitous. They claim that we should, nay, must, promise everyone some minimal subsistence income, whether they work or not. This will provide the masses with the ability to survive, and thus society will be preserved.
August 16, 2019
The CO2-reduced future the elites want for the rest of us
Arthur Chrenkoff outlines the self-imposed hardship of a new Swedish MEP as he struggles to make his 24-hour weekly commute between Stockholm and Strasbourg (because he’s pretending that there are no flights between those two locations) and explains that it’s emblematic of the kind of future “our” leaders want all of us peasants to be living in the future:
Greta Thunberg at the EU Parliament, 16 April, 2019.
European Parliament photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Listen, I’m all for it; if people want to go back in time as a result of their own free choice that’s wonderful. At least these martyrs for Gaia are putting their money where their mouth is – on train as opposed to plane tickets. They are not being hypocrites, unlike the two hundred celebrities who came on 114 private jets and numerous superyachts to Google’s climate change summit in Sicily the other week. Even St Greta herself, the teenage idiot savant of the green movement, will be eschewing plane travel and going to the UN Climate Action Summit in New York in September on a zero-emission yacht. Want to suffer 24-hour Strasbourg-Stockholm regular commutes or a few weeks at sea between Europe and America so as not to sin again the planet, knock yourself out. My problem starts as soon as the environmental flagellanti decide it’s not enough that simply they care and want to start imposing their totalitarian solutions on everyone else.
[…]
This indeed seems to be the vision of an ecommunist utopia now increasingly on offer from its vocal and influential supporters:
- As Thunberg herself declares in her musical collaboration with the Brit pop band The 1975 released last month (all proceeds to the pests of Extinction Rebellion who have a tendency to glue themselves to busy intersections): it’s “time to rebel” and for “civil disobedience” … “We have to acknowledge that the older generations have failed, all political movements in their current form have failed, but Homo sapiens have not yet failed … Now is not the time for speaking politely. Now is the time to speak clearly.”
- David Runciman, politics professor at Cambridge University: “If electoral democracy is inadequate to the task of addressing climate change, and the task is the most urgent one humanity faces, then other kinds of politics are urgently needed … Channeling more energy into these other forms of democracy — into citizens’ assemblies and civil disobedience, rather than elections and party-building — will change our politics drastically. But it may be the only way to ensure our planet does not change beyond recognition.”
- Greenpeace: “We’re not advocating that everyone adopt a ‘meatless’ diet tomorrow. But we all must develop “meat consciousness” and reduce the level of meat in our diets. Shifting to more plant-based foods is essential to combatting climate change, soil, air and water pollution, ocean dead zones, and myriad other problems caused by industrial livestock production.” Sentiments echoed this week by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
- And don’t even mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.
This is the future according to eco-warriors: anti-democratic, anti-growth and prosperity, with your options on everything from how (and if) you travel to what you eat restricted by your moral betters.
As my more favourite Scandinavian, Bjorn Lomborg, wrote recently:
This year, the world will spend $US162 billion ($230bn) subsidising renewable energy, propping up inefficient industries and supporting middle-class homeowners to erect solar panels, according to the International Energy Agency. In addition, the Paris Agreement on climate change will cost the world from $US1 trillion to $US2 trillion a year by 2030. Astonishingly, neither of these hugely expensive policies will have any measurable impact on temperatures by the end of the century …
Global warming is a real, man-made problem — but it is just one of many challenges facing humanity. We shouldn’t base our policy decisions on Hollywood movies or on scare scenarios but on the facts. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if we did absolutely nothing to respond to global warming, the total impact by the 2070s will be the equivalent to a 0.2 per cent to 2 per cent loss in average income. That’s a challenge that requires our attention — but it’s far from the end of the world …
Despite costing a fortune, the Paris Agreement will have virtually no impact on global temperatures. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has estimated that even if every country makes every single carbon cut suggested in the Paris treaty to the fullest extent, CO2 emissions would be cut by only 1 per cent of what would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2C. Incurring an annual $US1 trillion cost while failing to rein in temperature rises is a very poor idea.
August 14, 2019
QotD: Proto-progressive thought
Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Southey’s Colloquies on Society”, 1830.
