Quotulatiousness

May 22, 2018

“[Hamas] knows there is a market for stories of Palestinian pain, and it is happy to flood that market”

Filed under: Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Brendan O’Neill explains why Hamas is so willing to literally sacrifice Palestinian lives for media coverage:

A 2007 map of the West Bank and Gaza, showing Israeli settlements
Via Wikimedia Commons

It is becoming increasingly clear that Hamas pushes Gaza’s people into harm’s way because it knows their suffering will strike a chord across the West. Because it knows images of their hardship will be shared widely, wept over, and held up as proof of the allegedly uniquely barbarous nature of the Jewish State. Hamas knows there is a hunger among the West’s so-called progressives for evidence of Palestinian pain, and by extension of Israeli evil, and it is more than willing to feed this hunger.

The clashes at the Gaza border, in which more than 60 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured, cannot be viewed in isolation from Western liberals’ peculiar and disproportionate obsession with Israel. It now seems undeniable that this was no instinctive, grassroots protest, but rather one that was carefully orchestrated by Hamas. As a New York Times reporter described it, after midday prayers clerics and leaders of Hamas ‘urged thousands of worshippers to join the protests’. And Hamas’s urging was littered with false claims. It told people ‘the fence had already been breached’ and Palestinians were ‘flooding into Israel’. This was a lie. A Washington Post reporter details how Hamas’s leaders told people to keep attacking the border fence because ‘Israeli soldiers [are] fleeing their positions’. In truth, as Hamas knew only too well, the IDF was reinforcing its positions.

Israel had made clear, including in an airdrop of leaflets, that anyone who sought to dismantle the fence in Gaza, the de facto border between this part of Palestine and Israel, risked coming to harm. And still Hamas encouraged the protesters to strike at the fence. Still it sought to swell the angry ranks by pleading with people to go from their mosques to the border. Why would it do this? Why would the governing party of a territory knowingly put that territory’s citizens into serious danger?

This is the rub. This is the central question. And the answer is a disturbing one: Hamas does this because it knows it will benefit politically and morally if Palestinians suffer. It knows there is a market for stories of Palestinian pain, and it is happy to flood that market.

Writing in the New York Times last week, Matti Friedman, a former AP desk editor in Jerusalem, touched upon this trade in Palestinian horror. He said that during his years reporting from the Middle East he even developed a certain respect for Hamas’s ‘keen ability to tell a story’. Hamas’s great insight was to recognise that the vast majority of the Western media wanted ‘a simple story about villains and victims’, says Friedman. Most Western reporters and commentators weren’t interested in nuance and certainly not in any reading of events that might seek to understand the Israeli position. No, they wanted stories of ‘dead human beings’, made dead by ‘unwarranted Israeli slaughter’, says Friedman.

May 15, 2018

Larry Correia gets the instant “unperson” treatment from Origins

Filed under: Books, Gaming, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Science fiction writer Larry Correia was (briefly) the guest of honour at Origins. People threw tantrums and made unfounded accusations and the con chair melted:

So I’m no longer the writer guest of honor at Origins. My invitation has been revoked. It was the usual nonsense. Right after I was announced as a guest some people started throwing a temper tantrum about my alleged racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever (of course, with zero proof or actual examples), and the guy in charge (John Ward) immediately folded. He didn’t even talk to me first. He just accepted the slander and gave me the boot in an email that talked about how “inclusive” they are. I actually heard about it on facebook before I even saw the email.

Oh well.

They did this to John Ringo at ConCarolinas a little while ago, and took a lesson from it. This is just another new way for bullies to target people who disagree with them. Throw a fit, make up some accusations, and cry about how you feel unsafe. Now that they know it works, it is just another tool in their tool box.

For the record, I’m not any of the things they accuse me of. Despite writing a whole bunch of books, and a ton of political articles, and all of my many personal interactions with fans (I’ve done up to 15 cons and events in one year), none of these people can ever find any actual examples of me being sexist, racist, or homophobic (and the Guardian looked hard and still came up with nothing).

That’s because in reality, I’m a libertarian who does not give a shit who you are, or what you do, and it is none of my business, as long as you stay off my lawn. 🙂

This time they kept calling me a “rape apologist”. They dug up that classic that John Scalzi created about me several years ago. It’s total nonsense. I spent many years teaching self defense to women, and I’m all in favor of every rape attempt ending with the rapist receiving a couple hollow points to the chest. But that just goes to show the power of lies, rumor, and narrative.

So years later, complete strangers come out of the woodwork to talk about how evil I am. Yeah… That does get tiresome. It is wearying.

I’m really sorry for any fans who were planning on seeing me at Origins. Hopefully I’ll get to meet you at some other event.

For me personally, meh. I go to enough events. I’ll just do something else fun that weekend.

The saddest person in all of this is my son, who was my plus one. He was looking forward to playing a bunch of games, and then we were going to go to the zoo on Sunday. (They have manatees there!).

May 14, 2018

Progressophobia

Filed under: Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Coleman Hughes discusses the inability of many progressives to accept that progress actually has been made in many key areas:

The prevailing view among progressives today is that America hasn’t made much progress on racism. While no one would argue that abolishing slavery and dissolving Jim Crow weren’t good first steps, the progressive attitude toward such reforms is nicely summarized by Malcolm X’s famous quip, “You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you’re making progress.” Aside from outlawing formalized bigotry, many progressives believe that things haven’t improved all that much. Racist attitudes towards blacks, if only in the form of implicit bias, are thought to be widespread; black men are still liable to be arrested in a Starbucks for no good reason; plus we have a president who has found it difficult to denounce neo-Nazis. If racism still looms large in our social and political lives, then, as one left-wing commentator put it, “progress is debatable.”

But the data take a clear side in that debate. In his controversial bestseller Enlightenment Now, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker notes a steep decline in racism. At the turn of the 20th century, lynchings occurred at a rate of three per week. Now, racially-motivated killings of blacks occur at a rate of zero to one per year. What’s more, racist attitudes that were once commonplace have now become fringe. A Gallup poll found that only 4 percent of Americans approved of marriages between blacks and whites in 1958. By 2013, that number had climbed to 87 percent, prompting pollsters to call it “one of the largest shifts of public opinion in Gallup history.”

Why can’t progressives admit that we’ve made progress? Pinker’s answer for what he dubs “progressophobia” is two-fold. First, our intuitions about whether trends have increased or decreased are shaped by what we can easily recall — news items, shocking events, personal experience, etc. Second, we are more sensitive to negative stimuli than we are to positive ones. These two bugs of human psychology — called the availability bias and the negativity bias, respectively — make us prone to doomsaying, inclined to mistake freak news events for trends, and blind to the slow march of progress.

[…]

It’s a sign of the poverty of our discourse on racial progress and inequality that the rarest findings are thought to be normal, and the most common findings are thought to require special explanation.

Indeed, it is rare to find any two ethnic groups achieving identical outcomes, even when they belong to the same race. A cursory glance at the mean incomes of census-tracked ethnic groups shows Americans of Russian descent out-earning those of Swiss descent, who out-earn those of British descent, who out-earn those of Polish descent, who out-earn those of French descent in turn. If the disparity fallacy were true, then we ought to posit an elaborate system that is biased towards ethnic Russians, then the Swiss, followed by the Brits, the Poles and the French. Yet one never hears progressives make such claims. Moreover, one never hears progressives say, “French-Americans make 79 cents for every Russian-American dollar,” although the facts could easily be framed that way. Similar disparities between blacks and whites are regularly presented in such invidious terms. Rather than defaulting to systemic bias to explain disparities, we should understand that, even in the absence of discrimination, groups still differ in innumerable ways that affect their respective outcomes.

May 11, 2018

The impact of universities on Generation X

Filed under: Business, Education, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Last month, Aaron Clarey explained why (in his view) the 1980s were so much better than the 1990s:

For example if you went to the gas station you would buy gas there. If you went to Target you bought staples and everyday supplies. If you went to the coffee store they would serve you coffee. And if you went to a movie theater they would show you a movie. They were simpler times and it made my halcyon childhood days very enjoyable. But then something started happening in the 90’s that would end these blissful, innocent times.

College.

Well, not college unto itself necessarily, but the propaganda…err..umm… “education” my generation (Gen X) would receive in college. For you see, while we were all told we “had to go to college” because it was necessary for us to have any sort of career or professional life at all, at the same time some very conscious and very intentional people in academia had a political agenda. And it was to make sure that we not so much had skills that would land us jobs in the future, but more importantly (to them anyway) that we placed more value on social and political agendas than profit, production, efficiency and reality. So that by the time Gen X graduated from college, and inevitably started taking over the reigns of control of the economy (which we have), we would not be so much concerned with offering the best product at the best prices possible, but what I like to call “Profit Plus Purpose.”

Politics Politics Everywhere! In Your Soup and in Your Hair!

You see this “Profits Plus Purpose” every day in western economies. It is literally unavoidable. If you go to a hotel there is always a sign asking you to “save the planet” by reusing your towels. If you go to a coffee store they cannot help themselves from bragging about their organicfairtradefreetradegaiaunicorn credentials. When you walk into a Target they’re always bragging about how they give back 5% to the community. Even British Petroleum tells you about how environmentally friendly they are at their gas pumps, while Exxon Mobil actually has a “corporate social responsibility page.” Matter of fact, this propaganda is so thorough and so complete Generation Z will be the first generation to be brought up where there has ALWAYS been some kind of secondary political message forcefully embedded into nearly every product and service sold in America.

The reason “Profits Plus Purpose” propaganda was so COMPLETE and UNIVERSALLY successful can be found in its genius genesis. It capitalizes on the egotistical and lazy nature of human beings. Leftist academics and politicians started propagandizing Generation X in college with the beginnings of things like “diversity,” “feminism,” “environmentalism,” “global warming,” etc. (you could almost pinpoint it to the date Captain Planet first aired). Whether you believe in the veracity of these “isms” or not is moot, because their ulterior purpose was to give then-naïve-and-egotistical Gen X’ers immediate gratification, purpose, morality, and ego in exchange for their life-long leftist political loyalty and further advancing said political agendas well into the future.

Why, you weren’t just some rank and file Mechanical Engineering major. You were an environmentalist Mechanical Engineering major.

Why, you weren’t some mass produced business major. You were an empowered, feminist, future business leader.

You weren’t some worthless, math-avoidant liberal arts degree major. You were a pro-refugee activist utterly unemployable liberal arts degree major.

Thus, whereas learning a real skill from a real degree took deterring work, effort, and rigor, immediately subscribing to some kind of moral leftist political crusade was effortless, yet provided immediate value and agency. Gen X couldn’t sign up fast enough and thus virtue signaling and Social Justice Warriors were born.

H/T to SDA for the link.

May 3, 2018

“[T]hose who cry ‘cultural appropriation’ are merely whingers with too much time on their hands”

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Naomi Firsht rightly calls cultural appropriation “the ultimate first world problem”:

If ever there was an entirely invented problem, it is ‘cultural appropriation’. No one had even heard of it five years ago. Now it pops up in news stories on an almost weekly basis.

Mansfield College at Oxford University cancelled a cannabis-themed party a few weeks ago because some students feared it could lead to cultural appropriation. It seems some were concerned that the team organising the event drew on the music and culture of the Caribbean in its invitation.

That anyone could care so much as to complain about an event that encouraged students to ‘Get creative with puns’ for fancy-dress ideas – ‘Ganjalf’, ‘The Grim Reefer’ and ‘Ganja Claus’ were among the suggestions – is just sad.

The people most likely to denounce others for their “cultural appropriation” are also the ones most likely to suffer at the sight (or thought) of anyone having fun. They’re modern-day Puritans with tattoos, piercings, and multi-coloured hair.

Let’s be honest, those who cry ‘cultural appropriation’ are merely whingers with too much time on their hands. Not only is this a non-problem, it is also an inherently First World, middle-class problem. Just take a look at Teen Vogue’s article on this year’s Coachella – the annual music and arts festival held in California.

Writer Dillon Johnson complains about ‘appropriative fashion’ at the festival, including bindis, box braids and warbonnets. ‘It’s never okay to wear someone’s culture as a costume, especially not for the sake of getting double taps’, writes Johnson, before generously offering to ‘inform and educate those that are willing to learn’.

Considering a ticket to this year’s Coachella cost a minimum of $429 (and that’s before you’ve paid for accommodation, travel and food), it’s unlikey the festival-goers’ fashion choices will be of much importance to most people.

One of the greatest things about culture is its unifying power. One group borrowing cultural aspects of another is a sign of a diverse society that is proud and admiring of its many influences. As an Ashkenazi (of Eastern Europe descent) Jew, I take immense pleasure in hearing Yiddish words (the language of my grandparents and great-grandparents) being used so liberally in the US. You’d be hard pressed to find a New Yorker who doesn’t know words like schmuck, bubbe and chutzpah. And the liberal littering of Yiddish phrases in Hollywood films always makes me smile. It breathes new life into an old language.

The rage against cultural appropriation sucks the fun out of culture, and, even worse, encourages a new kind of segregation. We should encourage cultural sharing – it enriches our society. Only a schmuck would think otherwise.

April 9, 2018

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire – Horror in Manhattan – Extra History

Filed under: History, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 7 Apr 2018

A throwaway cigarette landed on a pile of cloth. 146 workers died from the resulting fire. But this tragedy motivated citizens and politicians to take a stand from workers’ rights, creating a far safer world that we still live in over a century later.

April 8, 2018

QotD: Just and unjust profits

Filed under: Business, Economics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

“Progressives’” hostility to free trade would be amusing were its consequences less baneful: deeply distrustful of the motives of business people, and convinced that profits are ethically suspect, Sandersnistas and many other “Progressives” are in the front lines of the troops who are intent on using trade restrictions to protect business people from competition and, thus, to enhance business people’s prospects of earning excess profits – profits that truly are ethically unjust because they are the fruits of the forced removal from consumers of choices on how they, consumers, may spend their own money. (Of course, the very same economically damaging and ethically unjust consequences spring from trade restrictions supported by Trumpkins and many other conservatives. The tales that each of these economically ignorant groups tell to each other to justify their mercantilist policies differ, but the policies and the harmful results are identical.)

Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2016-07-30.

March 30, 2018

QotD: “Progressive” eugenicists

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Although their ethics were appalling, “Progressive” eugenicists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries at least got their economic analysis correct: they understood that forcibly raising employers’ cost of employing certain kinds of labor would reduce the quantity of that labor that is employed. This correct economic understanding was at the foundation of these “Progressives’” support for minimum wages; these “Progressives” explicitly wanted to keep people that they regarded as ‘undesirable’ from working.

I say (and believe) that these “Progressives’” ethics were appalling. Yet I’m quite sure that they did not see themselves as monsters. They surely believed themselves to be enlightened, humane, and highly ethical. They believed that they worked for a larger cause – “social reform” – and saw eugenics, minimum wages, and other uses of state force as progressive means of improving humankind through social engineering. One lesson here is that people convinced that they have a mission to improve society by helping forcibly to re-arrange that society so that it conforms to some pre-conceived image are dangerous brutes (if ones that wear suits) whose brutality is hidden from them by their consciously held good intentions and masked from their contemporaries, ironically, by the grand scale (‘society’) upon which they propose to implement their schemes. (If Bill pokes a gun at his neighbor Betty and threatens to shoot Betty if she pays any of her workers less than $7.25 per hour, Bill is rightly recognized as a brute who belongs in prison. Yet if Bill persuades a uniformed and well-armed gang to threaten to shoot, not just Betty, but everyone in the state who employs workers at wages lower than $7.25 per hour, Bill is celebrated as a humane social reformer who belongs in public office. It’s damn bizarre.)

Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the day…”, Café Hayek, 2016-07-16.

March 25, 2018

QotD: America’s “read-only” activists

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

Outside, unbeknownst to those of us on the panel, the individuals who left said things like, “even the women in there have been brainwashed!” and “Nazis are not welcome in civil society.”

When banal observations like “men and women are different heights” prompts the accusation that I’m both brainwashed and a Nazi, it’s clear that this was not good faith protest.

It is true that the authoritarian-left is denying biology, but the deeper truth of the situation is perhaps even more concerning. The incoherence of the protesters’ responses and the fact that the walkout was scheduled in advance suggests something darker: the protesters are “read-only,” like a computer file that cannot be altered. They will not engage ideas — they will not even hear ideas — because their minds are already made up. They have been led to believe that exposure to information is in and of itself dangerous.

Scientists, philosophers, and scholars of all sorts have effectively been accused of thoughtcrimes before it is even known what we’re going to say. The very concept of thoughtcrime, as Orwell himself well understood, is the death knell to discourse, to discovery, to democracy.

Heather Heying, “On the dangers of read-only activism”, Medium.com, 2018-03-02.

March 21, 2018

QotD: “Woke”

Filed under: Humour, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In case you were unaware, “woke” is a term used by urban teens to describe a mental state in which one believes they are cognizant of how the world really works but instead wouldn’t have a clue if it slapped them in the face. Saying that someone is “woke” is a hip way of saying that they suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect.

Jim Goad, “The Problem With White Guys These Days”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-02-26.

March 16, 2018

QotD: Achieving socialist nirvana

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The evidence is in. Again. Socialism and government statism is the only way to eliminate income inequality.

As reported in Reuters, a 3 university study of conditions in Venezuela has shown that 90% of citizens now live in poverty. But socialism can only achieve so much. The other 10% must suffer in abject affluence so that the 90% can have income equality.

That in Venezuela income equality necessitates poverty is a design feature of the policy and not a fault.

Venezuela has also demonstrated that socialism can not only eliminate income inequality, it can also eliminate obesity. There was no need to deploying a sugar tax, when the income equalization policies achieved the same ends. You see, Venezuelans reported losing an average of 11 kilograms in 2017. This was on top of losing an average of 8 kilograms in 2016.

Viva Venezuela. Viva Chavez. Viva Maduro.

“I Am Spartacus”, “Nirvana – income equality and a truly fair society”, Catallaxy Files, 2018-02-23.

March 15, 2018

Tip-toe around topics so as to avoid “triggering” someone

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

Matthew Blackwell isn’t alone in finding it necessary to avoid certain topics of conversation when talking with his friends on the left:

Outbursts of emotional hostility from progressive activists – now described as Social Justice Warriors or SJWs – have come to be known as getting ‘triggered.’ This term originally applied to sufferers of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but activists have adopted it to describe the anxiety and discomfort they experience when they are exposed to views with which they disagree. “Fuck free speech!” one group of social justice advocates recently told Vice Media, as if this justified the growing belief among university students that conservatives should be prevented from speaking on college campuses. It’s no secret that, with the rise of the triggered progressive, university professors are increasingly intimidated by their own students. An illustrative example of this alarming trend was provided by the hordes of screaming students who surrounded the distinguished Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis and demanded his head (which they duly received). Christakis had made the mistake of defending an email his wife had written gently criticizing Yale’s attempts to regulate students’ Halloween costumes. “Who the fuck hired you?!” screamed one irate student in response. “You should step down!”

This sort of my-way-or-the-highway mentality is now spreading well beyond the urban university and into even remote communities. In the small Outback Australian town of Alice Springs where I once lived, agitators have attacked and attempted to silence the local aboriginal town councillor Jacinta Price for her principled efforts to improve the lives of her people. When Price tried to sound the alarm about skyrocketing sexually transmitted diseases, or the adult rape of children in aboriginal communities, she was shouted down as a ‘traitor’ and a ‘coconut’ (a term of disparagement used to describe a person deemed to be black on the outside and white on the inside). These criticisms do not come from the majority of aboriginal people in Alice Springs, but from a minority of furiously offended activists who, in their own little circles, plot to have Price undemocratically removed from the town council. Censorship is now the instrument of choice, and a reactionary authoritarianism increasingly defines what the liberal Muslim activist Maajid Nawaz has termed the ‘Regressive Left.’

So how and why have these activists become so intolerant and horrible to deal with? Part of this hostility can be explained by a wilful ignorance and incuriosity about ideas with which they disagree. Every so often, a progressive friend will peruse my bookshelf in a thought-police sort of fashion. What happens next is fairly predictable. Once they realize that Malinowski’s Melanesian epic The Sexual Life of Savages doesn’t include any erotic pictures, they will turn their attention to the Ayn Rand collection. “Why do you have these?” they ask with an air of indignation, holding up a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. “Have you ever read her?” I will ask. “No,” they reliably respond.

The liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill once explained that, “The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary’s case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own.” Mill held that unless we carefully study the views of those with whom we disagree, we will never really know what they’re right or wrong about. “He who knows only his own side of the case,” Mill wrote in his 1859 book On Liberty, “knows little of that.” Our opponents could be right for all we know or care, because they may know a fact or offer an argument we’ve never thought to consider. And even if they aren’t right, Mill points out that specks of truth may exist among their falsehoods which can guide our minds in new directions.

March 14, 2018

“[Jordan Peterson has] been described as ‘rightwing’ or ‘far right’ by journalists who have apparently forgotten how to think”

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

In The Guardian, Gareth Hutchens discusses the rise of Jordan Peterson:

Professor Jordan B Peterson is not yet a household name in Australia.

But he’s in the middle of a speaking tour that has found an enthusiastic audience. All four speaking events have sold out, including his Sydney and Brisbane shows this week. Organisers know they could have booked more venues.

Why are Australians paying to hear him talk?

Peterson loathes identity politics, rails against postmodernism and “neo-Marxism”, and despises gender studies and political correctness. He asserts the biological differences between men and women, and delivers pep talks on how to live a meaningful life and how to find the right partner.

He gives lectures on the truths embedded in myths and legends that are thousands of years old.

To appreciate where he’s coming from, it helps to be familiar with Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and their premonition that the death of mass belief in God would lead to nihilism and/or the rise of totalitarian value systems as alternatives.

I’ve watched Peterson’s online lectures for a while now, after he became an internet celebrity in late 2016.

It’s been fascinating witnessing media outlets trying to come to terms with him. He’s been described as “rightwing” or “far right” by journalists who have apparently forgotten how to think.

Does he belong to the far right because he loathes political correctness, identity politics and postmodernism? Noam Chomsky has made similar criticisms for decades. As did Christopher Hitchens.

Is it rightwing to lament the damage done to the left by the increasing tendency of leftist students on North American campuses to harass people who challenge their ideological orthodoxy? Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist and physician from Yale University, who is a self-confessed progressive, says he can’t understand their behaviour. Bret Weinstein, a former biology professor of Evergreen State College, says he can’t understand it either. He considers himself “deeply progressive” but he says the left is “eating itself.”

Peterson deserves to be taken seriously.

March 2, 2018

QotD: Cronyism

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… I would argue that we don’t have truly free trade or, increasingly, a free economy in the United States. The Progressives always look at the rising income inequality and maintain that it’s the inevitable result of capitalism. That’s hogwash, of course, and Proggies believe it because they’re dolts. But the problem in this country isn’t free trade — we have precious little of it — or unrestricted capitalism, since we have precious little of that as well. The issue behind rising income inequality isn’t capitalism, it’s cronyism. Income isn’t being redirected to the 1% because capitalism has failed, it’s happening because we abandoned capitalism in favor of the regulatory crony state and its de facto collusion between big business/banking interests and a government that directs capital to favored political clients, who become “too big to fail”. It doesn’t matter, for instance, whether the president is a Democrat or Republican, because we know the Treasury Secretary will be a former — and future — Goldman Sachs executive.

Indeed, what we call “free trade” nowadays isn’t the Theory of Comparative Advantage in action. It’s corporations being allowed to ship jobs to low wage countries overseas to offset the cost of regulatory burdens in the US that restrict competition from new entrants to the market. That works great for large corporations. Not only do they get to offset the regulatory costs by overseas production, but slower job growth in the US flattens domestic wages, too, and sends millions out of the labor force altogether. For working people, the biggest financial rewards from the current “free trade” regime seem mainly reaped by large business and banking interests. Again, people know if their own lives are better or worse than they used to be, and if the promises of elites have been born out by their own experience.

Dale Franks, “Vote Properly, You Virulent Racist!”, Questions and Observations, 2016-06-28.

February 28, 2018

QotD: Words as “physical violence”

Filed under: Education, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Berkeley. Evergreen. Middlebury. Missou. Yale. Brown. McMasters. Wilfred Laurier. The list goes on. One must wonder where this trend will ultimately take us. There have been several justifications given for this increasing rash of no-platforming, shaming, and at times, physical violence on North American campuses. In essence, these justifications can be distilled into a triad of well-meaning but ultimately flawed theses, namely, 1.) that all discourse is about power and that any speech that renders a listener physiologically uncomfortable therefore rises to the level of a physical attack upon that individual, thereby justifying actual physical violence in response, 2.) that for the sake of historically marginalized voices, persons who are members of historically privileged groups should forfeit their right to free speech or ought to remain silent, 3.) that certain assertions, even if possibly true, are nonetheless morally impermissible to make since to do so will likely create conditions whereby bad-intentioned persons will inevitably and successfully advance their morally heinous projects.

This first thesis — that all discourse is fundamentally about power — finds its philosophical origins in the likes of post-modernists such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. To quote Foucault, “Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations.” Thus, on Foucalt’s view, if all discourse is, at heart, really just veiled force relations between competing groups; if language isn’t fundamentally capable of being about objective truth or about the world in any meaningful sense, then the ink symbols written on the page and the shaped air admitted from one’s mouth in the forms of ‘rationality’, ‘facts’, ‘knowledge’, and ‘truth’ are just another set of weapons in a person’s overall arsenal to seize and maintain power, no different in kind from weapons of a physical sort. To speak then, on Foucault’s view, is to wield a weapon, albeit a subtler and refined one. The uncomfortable physiological feeling of hearing offensive speech, it would then seem, vindicates this view that one is being attacked. One might thus conclude, “Why not attack back with heavier, more effective, and more expedient weapons?”

Michael Robillard, “In Defense of Offense”, Quillette, 2018-02-05.

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