… sometimes Mark Steyn seems like the only conservative you can discuss these issues with, because most Republicans think popular culture is beside the point, if not downright dangerous. Steyn, on the other hand, has performed “Kung Fu Fighting” before thousands of people in civic auditoria more accustomed to Mary Kay Cosmetics conventions, so he gets it.
“Social conservatives are always editing pop culture,” says Steyn, “and it’s completely pathetic. Conservatives play to the caricature. Mention a French movie and the crowd turns on you. It’s a reductive view of the world. There are ideological enforcers casting aside works of art because they contain bad words or uncomfortable associations. It’s one of the biggest abdications of the American right. Who gives a crap about who gets elected to the Congressional district in Ohio? — that’s not going to change the culture. It’s movies that move the culture. And if you abdicate that space, you lose. Jeb Bush spent a billion dollars to get 2.8 per cent of the vote in Iowa. Mitt Romney and people like him who have a billion dollars — don’t spend it on politics, buy a TV network! Theatre, movies, music, that’s where the battles are fought. They’ve abdicated that space in the schools. As a result, my kid had to sit through Al Gore’s lousy movie three times. All effective storytelling is inherently conservative — because your choices have consequences. For the Left, nothing has consequences. But the trends are all in the Left’s direction, because the Right got out of the game — they chose to make themselves culturally irrelevant. If you’re not in the same room, having the conversation, there’s not gonna be a solution.”
Mark Steyn, interviewed by John Bloom, “Mark Steyn, Cole Porter and Free Speech”, Quadrant, 2017-05-11.
May 24, 2019
QotD: Politics and culture
May 23, 2019
Those “theories of history”
At Rotten Chestnuts, Severian starts off talking great-man versus vast-impersonal-forces-of-history then segues into passivity (not Severian’s, but the widespread use of the passive voice):
Lionel Royer (1852-1926). Vercingetorix jette ses armes aux pieds de Jules César (Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar)
The painting depicts the surrender of the Gallic chieftain after the Battle of Alesia (52 BC). The depiction of Gauls with long hair and mustaches is also called into question today. The horse is a Percheron, although at this time this breed was not in Gaul. The rectangular shield also does not accord with the time when they were mostly oval.
Musée CROZATIER du Puy-en-Velay. — http://www.mairie-le-puy-en-velay.fr/ via Wikimedia Commons.
Academics, of course, are all in on “social” explanations of historical phenomena. Being weak, ineffective people themselves, with no experience of life, the very idea of a Caesar frightens and repels them… so they construct theories of History in which it is impossible for a Caesar to exist. On this view, “social forces” (what they used to call “the relations of the means of production”) tore the Roman Republic apart; the Empire was its inevitable next stage. Assign whatever name you like to the Imperator — whether Caesar, Marius, Sulla, or Miles Gloriosus, he’s just the temporary face of the vast, impersonal social forces that control our fate. None of this “History is just the biographies of great men” for them!
The eggheads have a point, though, albeit not the one they think they’re making. The Roman elite’s social system was designed to produce a certain type of man. Whether Gaius Julius Caesar was personally the embodiment of that system, or a perversion of it, is irrelevant — the system was designed to produce men like Caesar, fellows with a very particular set of skills. Eggheads have never seen one, but anyone who has kicked around the world outside the ivory tower for a bit has met that type of guy. The skills themselves are fairly common, at least in embryo. Whether a potential Caesar becomes actual might well be merely a question of opportunity and scale.
A terrifying notion, that, when you look around the modern West. The one characteristic all effective elites have in common is the self-knowledge that they are the elite. The British, for instance, thought nothing of sending some 19 year old kid, whose slim formal education was mostly Latin and Greek, off to govern the Punjab. It worked, largely because that kid, whatever his defects of intellect and ability, had character, of the kind you just don’t get without a pedigree stretching back to Hastings.
Again, if you’ve ever met one of the horsey set you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, the most accessible American equivalents are the sons and grandsons of career army officers. Think of Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump, as played by Gary Sinise in the movie. That kind of guy always completes the mission, or dies trying, because it’s simply unthinkable that he won’t. After five generations, West Point is in his DNA…
The Supreme Court of Canada goes on a roadtrip
John Carpay explains why the Supreme Court’s junket in September isn’t a good idea:
“Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa”by daniel0685 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
While hearing two cases in Winnipeg rather than Ottawa is a friendly gesture, the Court’s choice of which groups to meet with – and not meet with – in Winnipeg is necessarily a political choice. If you thought the Court would meet with Ukrainians and Germans (Manitoba’s two largest non-English ethnic communities), prisoners, seniors, taxpayer groups and English language rights activists opposed to official bilingualism, you would be wrong.
In fact, the Court has announced that it will meet with “indigenous communities, the francophone community, the legal community, and students.” What message does this send to the Canadian public, which wants an impartial court deciding on aboriginal claims? What does meeting with the francophone community in Winnipeg say in relation to the Court hearing a case about minority language educational rights? And what if university tuition payments were at the heart of a case that came before the SCC, with its Justices having met only with students, but not with taxpayers?
As Canadians, the Supreme Court judges already interact with the public in their private lives, in Ottawa and elsewhere. One could reasonably assume that the nine lawyers appointed to this Court each meet individually with various people regularly, on the basis of friendship, shared interests, or family obligations. The people with whom any one judge meets over the course of a year would likely not form a perfect microcosm of Canadian society, in terms of race, religion, political views, income, and level of education. This is to be expected, and there is nothing wrong with it, because the personal connections formed by any one judge are not publicly endorsed by the Court. Not so for these meetings of “the Court” as a whole in Winnipeg, which is what makes the Court’s exclusion of many groups worrisome.
Chief Justice Wagner would no doubt respond to the above by saying that he and his colleagues will do their very best to decide all cases impartially, regardless of which groups they chose to meet with (and not meet with) in Winnipeg. And he would be right.
But that doesn’t solve the problem. The Court has made a political decision to meet with francophones, not English language rights activists; lawyers not prisoners; students not seniors; aboriginals not Germans or Ukrainians. In view of the ancient and centrally important legal maxim, “Not only must justice be done; justice must be seen to be done,” the Court should not be making these political decisions in the first place, in order to avoid even the appearance of possible bias.
It’s bad enough that the Prime Minister is seen to be putting a thumb on the scales of justice, but much worse if the highest court in the land is perceived to be doing the same thing.
May 22, 2019
Climate change, no, climate crisis, no, climate catastrophe, no, we mean climate APOCALYPSE!!!
The official marching orders for journalists now insist that the language to use around what was formerly “global warming” or “climate change” will now be described in starker, more frightening terms. Canada’s Liberal Party, under Justin Trudeau, has been virtue signalling for pretty much its entire term in office on the climate issue and with a fall election coming into view, the rhetoric will become more extreme and shrill. Jay Currie discusses climate change and the Canadian election:
I suspect this divide between people who think “doing something” about climate change (no matter how futile) and people who do not accept the urgency of dealing with something they really don’t believe in will inform politics in the West for the next few years. Most particularly, it will inform the next Canadian federal election.
The Liberal Party of Canada has been going all in on its “tax on carbon pollution” (a fine bit of wordsmithing managing to attach “carbon” to “pollution”). Led by the remarkably scolding Catherine McKenna, the Libs seem to think that purporting to “do something” about climate change is a vote winner. So McKenna tours the country speaking to uncritical school children and assorted environmentalists about how important having a “carbon tax” is. The Liberals tax will save the planet, ensure sea level rise stops (easy because sea level is not actually rising), save the Arctic ice cap (already saving itself, thank you), keep polar bears from extinction (also easy because virtually all polar bear populations are growing) and reduce or eliminate climate change “caused” weather events. Plus, Canada will honour its Paris Accord commitments (we won’t) and serve as a beacon to lesser nations like China and India in their efforts to combat climate change (as if).
The Liberals think that the fact that a carbon dioxide tax in Canada will have a rounding error effect on worldwide emissions and no detectable effect on world temperature does not matter politically. What matters politically is that the Liberals believe that there is a large constituency out there which urgently wants to “do something”.
The NDP is fully on board and, of course, the Greens have been banging the climate change drum forever. Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives seem to be on the fence. Like the Coalition in Australia, the Conservatives endorse the “climate change is a problem” line and very few are willing to challenge the underlying science or economics for fear of being branded uncool “climate change deniers”. But the Conservatives seem to be, prudently in my view, dragging their feet on “doing something” about CO2.
Political virtue signalling on the climate file is the easy part. All that is really required is the abandonment of any sort of scientific judgement (easy when you are told that all the scientists agree that climate change is real and primarily human caused) and policy skepticism (we don’t need a cost benefit analysis, this is an emergency!). The hard part occurs when you try to “do something”. Because doing something means that people are going to see their expenses rise without actually seeing (in any tangible way) any actual benefit. In fact, as Ontario’s wonderfully disastrous adventure in wind energy demonstrated, tax dollars can be wasted and consumer prices increased all without making any difference at all to the climate.
May 21, 2019
The Brexit Party may be getting dirty foreign money! Call out the plod!
In the Guardian, totally neutral and disinterested journalists report on former Labour PM Gordon Brown’s call to investigate where the Brexit Party is getting its funding from:
The Electoral Commission is under mounting pressure to launch an investigation into the funding of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party because of concerns that its donation structure could allow foreign interference in British democracy.
Before Thursday’s crucial European elections, Gordon Brown has written to the Electoral Commission calling on it to urgently examine whether the party has sufficient safeguards on its website to prevent the contribution of “dirty money”.
The former Labour prime minister will use a speech in Glasgow on Monday to say an investigation into the Brexit party’s finances is urgent and essential.
“Nigel Farage says this election is about democracy. Democracy is fatally undermined if unexplained, unreported and thus undeclared and perhaps under the counter and underhand campaign finance – from whom and from where we do not know – is being used to influence the very elections that are at the heart of our democratic system,” he will say, according to pre-released extracts.
As Tim Worstall points out:
It’s actually an entire 13 paragraphs later that we get to the meat of the matter:
Only donations over £500 have to be declared under British law.
The Brexit Party is obeying every jot and tittle of electoral and fundraising law. This is the very system that the federast establishment set up itself. But, you know, the wrong people are succeeding under it so aspertions must be cast.
And guess what? The Electoral Commission isn’t going to get anything done by Thursday. Not even to be able to confirm that the law is being obeyed as it should be. But we’ve managed to get the propaganda out there that Nigel’s posse are bought by the Russians and that’s the point of it all anyway.
You might think me a little cynical here. But sadly I’m not. When I was working for Ukip the Times – Sam Coates it was – announced that we simply weren’t going to contest the next election. No reason given, no analysis performed, an apology of any prominence never was forthcoming. Just a bit of disinformation dropped into the public conversation there.
That’s how the federasts play and any governance system that has to play that way isn’t one we desire to be a part of, is it?
The Hell with the EU.
Of course, dirty anonymous foreign money sources can fund other groups too.
May 18, 2019
Justin Trudeau expects more than just ordinary loyalty from civil servants
In the Post Millennial, Mika Ryu summarizes Trudeau’s un-statesman-like behaviour through the Admiral Norman persecution — including his decision not to be in the house when a motion was passed apologizing to Norman — and offers an explanation for Trudeau’s oddities:
… according to a Globe and Mail report published around 6am on Friday by their Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife, who also broke the SNC-Lavalin story in February of this year.
In the new bombshell report, Mr. Trudeau is alleged to have been furious about the leak that prevented the Liberal government from cancelling a massive ship building contract that was already well on its way to being executed.
The prime minister is alleged to have felt “betrayed” by the leak, after “all he had done” for the public service after a decade under Harper. This is very similar to the reason why he yelled at MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes when she told him that she would not run for re-election.
It is becoming clear that defeating Harper has turned Trudeau into a hero in his own mind, for which the entire country and all of its citizen owe him an infinite debt.
It was already known that the Privy Council Office had called in the RCMP to investigate the person behind the collapse of a would-be sweetheart deal for the well-connected “Rockefellers of Atlantic Canada”. This was a very unusual move, which was supported by alleged “Irving’s Boy”.
It continues to paint a troubling picture of the prime minister, a man who perhaps might not have “been so forward” with his corruption if he knew that the national newspapers would report on it, even in the face of the state’s increasing use of sinister carrots and sticks in the run-up to the election.
QotD: “Revenue neutral” tax cuts
Real men (as well as pull-no-punches women) cut taxes. The lesser mortals that tend to inhabit Washington wring their hands and get all weak in the knees when it comes to cutting taxes. Rumors are President Trump will propose a real tax cut. I certainly hope so.
Once upon a time, most Republicans believed in tax cuts. Somewhere along the way, inside the beltway especially, Republicans forgot about the benefits of cutting taxes. Republicans became more concerned with government keeping “its” revenue than letting the people keep their money.
Too many Republican have become timid about tax cuts, often spouting the milquetoast line of “revenue neutral tax cuts.”
Let me translate that little bit of Washington-speak for you. “Revenue neutral” tax cuts aren’t really tax cuts. It’s more like tax shifting. Some will pay more. Some will pay less. And the net effect will be that government will collect the same amount of taxes.
If revenue neutral tax shifting is what Republicans stand for, maybe it’s time we re-evaluated what we really stand for.
What will “revenue neutral” tax cut mean to your business? Well, that may depend on how expensive your lobbyist is. Which side of the “revenue-neutral” ledger you wind up on may depend on how well the skids are greased, hardly, a pleasant scenario to anticipate.
I believe as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did, that the best way to stimulate our economy, promote job growth, and give our ailing middle class a raise is to cut taxes for all.
Rand Paul, “Real Men Cut Taxes”, Breitbart.com, 2016-04-25.
May 15, 2019
May 14, 2019
Is Canada ready for a New Green Democratic Party?
Ali Taghva explores the notion of the federal NDP and Green parties joining together:
With fundraising and polling numbers in sharp decline at the same time that experienced MPs and staff leave the party, it is evident, even the base of the NDP is beginning to lose faith in the current direction led by Jagmeet Singh.
Worryingly for every single NDP member in the country, this is occurring even when Justin Trudeau’s post-election honeymoon has long ended.
As a result, it appears that the Green Party has become the progressive vehicle gaining the most federal momentum. Their fundraising numbers are on the upswing, and if the trend in the latest by-election in B.C. holds up, they may be the preferred refuge for disenfranchised Liberal voters.
While the Green Party does have momentum, it will not be able to push forward as Canada’s progressive alternative, at least not alone.
The party is still astronomically behind the Conservatives and Liberals when it comes to fundraising, quality of candidates, and polling support.
Even in comparison to the NDP, the Greens are still behind in fundraising and polling, although the distance between the two parties is far more negligible.
With both parties too far back to do anything other than reducing the Liberal vote, ensuring a Conservative majority, it may be time for Canadian progressives to seriously consider a merger between the Green party and the New Democrats.
Okay, but why now? What would be the big draw … oh:
Perhaps most interestingly though, a united alternative progressive party could easily bring on-board the two highest-profile individuals who still have no declared party for the federal election, Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould.
With most Canadians believing Jody Wilson-Raybould’s account over that of the Prime Minister’s, her entrance into the race along with Jane Philpott’s could be the final piece which catapults the party into contention for the role of governing party.
Of course, of course … the old celebrity candidates trick. That always works. Well, in urban downtown ridings, anyway.
QotD: Karl Marx, noted racist
For those who see Marx as their hero, there are a few historical tidbits they might find interesting. Nathaniel Weyl, himself a former communist, dug them up for his 1979 book, Karl Marx: Racist. For example, Marx didn’t think much of Mexicans. When the United States annexed California after the Mexican War, Marx sarcastically asked, “Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?” Engels shared Marx’s contempt for Mexicans, explaining: “In America we have witnessed the conquest of Mexico and have rejoiced at it. It is to the interest of its own development that Mexico will be placed under the tutelage of the United States.”
Marx had a racial vision that might be interesting to his modern-day black supporters. In a letter to Engels, in reference to his socialist political competitor Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx wrote: “It is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses’ exodus from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a nigger. Now this union of Judaism and Germanism with a basic Negro substance must produce a peculiar product. The obtrusiveness of the fellow is also nigger-like.” Engels shared Marx’s racial philosophy. In 1887, Paul Lafargue, who was Marx’s son-in-law, was a candidate for a council seat in a Paris district that contained a zoo. Engels claimed that Lafargue had “one-eighth or one-twelfth nigger blood.” In a letter to Lafargue’s wife, Engels wrote, “Being in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.”
Marx was also an anti-Semite, as seen in his essay titled “On the Jewish Question,” which was published in 1844. Marx asked: “What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. … Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man — and turns them into commodities. … The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. … The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.”
Walter E. Williams, “What Do Leftists Celebrate?”, Townhall.com, 2017-05-10.
May 13, 2019
The political persecution of Vice-Admiral Norman
Conrad Black on the recently stayed prosecution of the former Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, Vice-Admiral Mark Norman:
The RCMP, the same Palooka force that brought us the ghastly fiasco of the trial and resounding acquittal of Senator Mike Duffy, alleged that Vice Adm. Norman was the source of press leaks, and searched his house with a warrant in January 2017, a fact that was also mysteriously leaked to the press. He was suspended with full pay, and finally, in March of 2018, he was charged with a criminal breach of trust. The government barred him from the benefit of the loan of money for legal fees to accused government employees pending judgment, a capricious attempt to starve him into surrender.
Neither the media, usually pretty quick to jump on the back of any defendant, nor any other serious observers, believed the defendant, who started in the navy as a diesel mechanic and rose for 33 years to commander of the fleet and then serve as vice-chief of the defence staff, would do such a thing, or that the RCMP had any real evidence. It didn’t, inciting the suspicion that the Mounties, if they can’t raise their game, should stick to musical rides and selling ginger ale, and reinforcing the view that the Armed Forces should be funded properly, and not just in phony announcements every few years of naval construction and army and air force procurement programs that don’t happen. And It is, in any case unacceptable that police corporals get warrants to search the home of the second highest military officer in the country on grounds that are eventually shown to be unfounded.
It appears to be clear that exculpatory evidence was withheld by the prosecutors, deliberately or otherwise. Outgoing Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary Lt. Gen. (Rt.) Andrew Leslie (a grandson of two former defence ministers, Gen. Andrew McNaughton and Brooke Claxton), had announced he would testify on behalf of Vice Adm. Norman. The prime minister ducked out of question period for two days as this contemptible abuse of prosecution collapsed. Instead, he should, if conscientiously possible, have blamed it on the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould. That would have been believable, given some of her other antics in that office.
If he can’t do that, then this rotten egg falls on him and could be a politically mortal blow. The SNC-Lavalin affair was an attempt to save jobs in Canada and avoid over-penalization of a successful international company where there is a legal right for the justice department to choose between a fine and criminal prosecution. It was bungled, a ludicrous amateur hour that brought down senior civil servants and led to expulsions of ex-cabinet ministers as Liberal MPs, but it was not a show-stopper unless the prime minister lied to Parliament.
This appears to be a malicious and illegal prosecution of a blameless senior serving officer, who fought his corner as a brave man must. If that is what it is, heads should roll, not of scapegoats, token juniors, or fall-guys, but of those responsible for this outrage.
QotD: The Church of Environmentalism
Julian Simon, the economist who was legendarily skeptical about environmental doom, once posed a question at an environmental forum: “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Almost every hand shot up. He then said, “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” There was no response, so he asked again, “Is there any evidence I could give you — anything at all — that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Again, no response. Simon concluded, “Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for church.”
Jeremy Carl, “The Church of Environmentalism”, Claremont Review of Books, 2016-02-25.
May 12, 2019
Mechanisms for redressing employment gender imbalances
We’ve often been told that too many men occupy positions of power and influence in the working world, but what would it take to meaningfully address those imbalances?
Equity … is based on the idea that the only certain measure of “equality” is outcome — educational, social, and occupational. The equity-pushers axiomatically assume that if all positions at every level of hierarchy in every organization are not occupied by a proportion of the population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general population that systematic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) must be at play. This assumption has as its corollary the idea that there are perpetrators (the “privileged,” for current or historical reasons) who are unfair beneficiaries of the system or outright perpetrators of prejudice and who must be identified, limited and punished.
[…]
Now it doesn’t seem like mere imagination on my part that all the noise about “patriarchal domination” is not directed at the fact that far more men than women occupy what are essentially trade positions. Nor does it seem unreasonable to point out that these are not particularly high-status jobs, although they may pay comparative well. It is also obvious that none of these occupations and their hierarchies, in isolation, can be thoughtfully considered the kind of oppressive patriarchy supposed to constitute the “West,” and aimed at the domination and exclusion of women. By contrast, the trade occupations are composed of cadres of working men, with difficult and admirable jobs, who keep the staggeringly complex, reliable and essentially miraculous infrastructure of our society functioning through rain and snow and heat and gloom of night and who should be credited gratefully with exactly that.
Let’s assume for a moment that we should aim at equity, nonetheless, and then actually think through what policies would inevitably have to be put in place to establish such a goal. We might begin by eliminating pay scales that differ (hypothetically) by gender. This would mean introducing legislation requiring companies to rank-order their sex representation at each level of the company hierarchy, adjust that to 50:50, and then adjust the pay differential by gender at every rank, so that the desired equity was achieved. Companies could be monitored over a five-year period for improvement. Failure to meet the appropriate targets would be necessarily met with fines for discrimination. In the extreme, it might be necessary to introduce staggered layoffs of men so that the gender equity requirements could be met.
Then there are the much broader social policy implications. We could start by addressing the hypothetical problems with college, university and trade school training. Many companies, compelled to move rapidly toward gender equilibria, will object (and validly) that there are simply not enough qualified female candidates to go around. Changing this would mean implementing radical and rapid changes in the post-secondary education system, implemented in a manner both immediate and draconian — justified by the obvious “fact” that the reason the pipeline problem exists is the absolutely pervasive sexism that characterizes all the programs that train such workers (and the catastrophic and prejudicial failure of the education system that is thereby implied).
The most likely solution — and the one most likely to be attractive to those who believe in such sexism — would be to establish strict quota systems in the relevant institutions to invite and incentivize more female participants, once again in proportion to the disequilibria in enrollment rates. If quotas are not enough, then a system of scholarship or, more radically (and perhaps more fairly) women could be simply paid to enroll in education systems where their sex is badly under-represented. Alternatively, perhaps, men could be asked to pay higher rates of tuition, in some proportion to their over-representation, and the excess used to subsidize the costs of under-represented females.
