Testing Power & Privilege

There were some developments over the weekend in the NYT racism story. Noted African-American right-winger Candice O. posted exactly the same language that was used against "white people," except she swapped in "Jewish." Now according to the prevailing neo-Marxist "only the powerful can have racism" theory an African-American woman should be able to say whatever she wants without it being racist, as her group memberships mean that she is not privileged nor powerful. But she was suspended immediately, due to what Twitter in embarrassment later proclaimed was an 'error.'

Meanwhile, someone drew an interesting comparison between the cases of this writer and Papa John. Again, according to the prevailing theory, Papa John should have been too privileged to be held accountable: he was white, male, and extremely rich. Yet he was purged ruthlessly by his own company for mentioning a racial slur; she was promoted in spite of (or, a friend of mine mentioned privately, because of) hers. Who really has privilege here?

Iowahawk has a suggestion for evaluating these cases.

Voluntary-ish euthanasia

Bookworm Room muses on whether "free" medical care makes euthanasia a less dangerous policy.  The idea is that greedy family members might choose euthanasia over costly medical care, but the state would never make that kind of calculation, right?

Land use

Cool graphics.

Matter of Fact That Was The Name of the Place

The story behind the song George Will hated, "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother." The author of the song explains how he was one of the hippies. The story is pretty amusing.

Faulty Scholarship

But not faulty in a surprising way. Just exactly in the way you'd expect. And for the reason we were discussing earlier this week, as applied to the discipline of sociology instead of social psychology. "Musa al-Gharbi’s research was published in the latest issue of The American Sociologist, a peer-reviewed journal that also recently published an article revealing that only two percent of sociology professors self-identify as conservative."

"NYT Hires Racist for Editorial Board"

From Patterico. "P.S. Kevin Williamson and Roseanne Barr, don’t get too excited. A different standard applies here." (For the record, Williamson is fine with it.)

This isn't a particularly important story. I'm just posting it because one of her trolling posts reads:

I dare you to get on Wikipedia and play "Things white people can definitely take credit for," it's really hard.

— professional twiter name (@sarahjeong) November 25, 2015

It's really not hard.

UPDATE:

Other statements she made are not at all racist, but still pretty nasty. Of course, it's all protected free speech. And it's good to know whose side someone is on. We could hardly wish for more transparency.

Catechism Declares Death Penalty Morally Forbidden

I'm pretty sure that I don't agree with this decision, or the chain of logic behind it. As the article spells out, it's a long evolution for the Church (which has in the past practiced the death penalty itself). Previous Popes have all participated in the motion. It wasn't done quickly or without thought.

All the same, it strikes me as philosophically disordered, and unsupportable from revelation as well. It cannot be a violation of the dignity of the living to die in this metaphysical system, as the God who made all of the living built death into the experience as an unavoidable aspect of that life. Nor does it seem reasonable, in a faith whose scripture teaches that 'the wages of sin is death,' to refuse to pay the wage to someone who has shown a certain commitment to the sin. A workman, after all, is worthy of his hire.

Forgiveness of the soul is important, crucial, perhaps the greatest and hardest and key teaching of Jesus. But the body dies, and so necessarily that natural theology cannot reasonably be read as otherwise than suggesting that it is God's will that it should die. It is freedom, not life, that is the dignity that needs to be most carefully preserved. To preserve life instead of freedom, and indeed at the consequence of lifelong imprisonment and unfreedom, strikes me as a fundamental moral error. To give them the wage they chose to seek is to respect their freedom; to refuse them their wage, and instead imprison them for decades in conditions far more restrictive of liberty than even slavery is the true violation of their dignity.

I suppose I am in danger of falling into heresy. What remains to be decided, by me, is if I will to be.

Seizing Property without Consent or Compensation

Over in South Africa, there's a move on by the ANC to change their constitution to allow them to just take what they want. South Africa might be thought to have a particularly difficult history that explains this otherwise radical policy.

On the other hand, in Georgia, one of the two candidates for governor agrees with the general idea. She sponsored a bill to require the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to "seize and destroy" broad classes of privately-owned firearms. The bill did not suggest that any of these arms would be paid for; just taken, and destroyed. Both actions are said to be justified because they are 'in the public interest.'

Georgia might also be said to have a 'particularly difficult history that explains an otherwise radical policy.' The same candidate has called for the destruction of the monument carved into Stone Mountain, although in calmer moments she has also endorsed better, wiser ideas for dealing with the monument and the history of the site. (The idea was popular enough that a comedian's fake Facebook event to 'Witness the Implosion of Stone Mountain' was floating around for a while. Lest people think this is a simple proxy for race, a whole bunch of people I know -- all of them white liberals -- were enthusiastic about this event, which is how it came across my page.)

On the other hand, I've been listening to all the talk about America from the Left that's been going on these last few years. I'm wondering if there's any place in America, or the West, that they don't think of as having a 'particularly difficult history' that justifies radical policies. And it occurs to me that it's easier to effect all the most radical ones after you've effected the seizure and destruction of the people's arms.

Real ID

Georgia started doing this a few years ago, but I had bought an 8 year driver's license and wasn't minded to go back before it was necessary. My next one will be a Real ID, though. I just applied for it last week. It's actually no more painful to get than the standard ID, which required nearly as much documentation. In North Carolina, which offers both a Real ID and a non-Real driver's license option, it's just as onerous to obtain the one as the other. You might as well get the Real one, if you're eligible for it.

Confirmed: Twitter Social Psychologists Solidly Anti-Trump

Per our discussion of the other day, it was always very likely that this would occur simply because less than four percent of social psychologists are socially conservative. But they picked some outspoken ones, just to be sure.

Good to Know

BB Headline: "Ginsburg: ‘I Am Mentally Fit Enough To Serve Through The End Of President Eisenhower’s Term.'"

The Wisdom/Madness of Crowds

Another Maggie's Farm link this morning:  An interview with Peter Thiel, whom I don't think I'd heard of before.  Very interesting fellow, a gay tech venture capitalist from the Silicon Valley who supports President Trump.  He talks about a number of pendulum-swings, such as the initial benefits of centralized networking followed by the drawbacks of congestion, and the need to avoid both closets and ghettos in identity politics.

Seems only fair

If a society chooses simultaneously to refuse to look at individuals as individuals, and to adopt absurd notions about whether traditional groupings of individuals are based in reality or empty convention, what's a guy to do when he finds his insurance company wants to charge him more for auto coverage than it would charge a woman?

The story reminds me of the old Jeff Foxworthy routine about answering the door to a sheriff's deputy who wants to arrest him if he can't pay some outstanding tickets.  He protests he's broke.  The deputy asks if he can write a  check.  "No, I can't write a--wait, hold on.  A check?  Well, heck, yeah, I can write you a check.  I thought you wanted money."

Presidentiality

We're watching President Trump address cheering crowds in Florida.  After describing triumph after triumph, including unheard-of employment rates among blacks, latinos, etc., he just remarked that people are always frowning and telling him he's not acting presidential.  He says he tells them, "It's a lot easier to act presidential than to do what I'm doing."

Finland Closes the Book on UBI

An experiment with giving everyone a basic income produces unsurprising results.

Before the experiment was approved by the government in 2016, KELA officials talked of paying 800 euros ($974) a month in unconditional income to a test group of working-age citizens. But by the time the program began early last year, the amount was whittled down to 560 euros: If extended to the whole country, the cost of the earlier proposal would have exceeded the Finnish government’s entire revenue....

It’s all but impossible to live on 560 euros in Finland.

So the proposed solution, of course, is a huge tax increase to cover an even more expensive program.

In a report on the future of work released earlier this month, the World Bank recommended the much more ambitious goal of considering UBI as a means of ensuring a “societal minimum” of welfare in a world of increasingly precarious employment and growing automation. If a society is to accept much higher taxes to pay for a basic income plan, it has to be for a revolutionary outcome, not a mere bump in employment numbers and a dent in the cost of social security administration.

'All the trials failed, so let's really commit to this approach' is not as inspiring as the authors seem to imagine.

A Call for Open Borders in USA Today

The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 was apparently not expected to have a big effect on actual outcomes in terms of who immigrated to America, but instead it proved to be a sea change that has rapidly altered the population since. For that reason, I'm doubtful of this author's claim that open borders would not lead to much change in our culture or values. I'm even more doubtful given this argument:

Even if values and culture change, so what? That happens in free societies. Who says America’s current values — some of them deeply evil — are the right ones?

"So what?" is bad enough, for those of us who think that there's something about the American way that is worth preserving. Indifference to such a heritage ought to be morally shocking, as much as a wastrel inheritor of a mere physical fortune who wastes the product of his ancestors' long labors without concern. Yes, such indifference should be shocking.

But then comes the naked assertion that our values are "deeply evil." That reveals the true motive, which is not in fact indifferent at all.

The War for Medieval Studies

Medieval Studies is the critical study of Europe’s self-identity. No understanding of the West is possible without it. Left-wing academics want to introduce the field to gender studies and race theory. When one Chicago professor publicly celebrated the Christian identity of the Middle Ages, she was branded a ‘violent fascist’ and ‘white supremacist’ — by other medievalists. Now Medieval Studies scholars are tearing their own discipline apart with witch-hunts, name-calling, boycotts and intimidation.

You may have concerns about the author of this piece, but his subject is another matter.

WHY I study the Middle Ages: JOY

Because I believe, with J.R.R. Tolkien, that, as creatures made in the image and likeness of a Maker, we are called by our Creator to participate as subcreators in the continuing work of creation and to be moved thereby to praise and thanks for the creation of which we are a part.

Because I believe in chivalry, science, romantic love, education in the liberal arts, the separation between Church and state, representative government, craftsmanship, markets, cities, written contracts, self-examination, self-improvement, self-defense, private property, the value of the individual, the dignity of merchants and laborers, and in caring for widows and orphans, the poor, the weak, the sick, for animals, and the natural world.

That's an impressive statement, and one that speaks of clarity of perception and thought. Clarity, also, of purpose. It is most admirable.

Ouroborus

I'm always interested in self-defeating arguments:

Steyer, Democratic aides concede, appears to be the furthest along among the group [testing the early waters for a presidential run in 2020], with an email list that aides say now is more than 5.4 million strong, a digital-heavy focus to his operations, a layer of staff to help coordina[t]e his two main operational arms (the Need to Impeach campaign and the climate organization NextGen), and plans to use the August recess to continue barnstorming the country with town hall appearances. His message of impeachment has also placed him at the vanguard of the party’s anti-Trump fervor. But even associates are not sold on that as the best messaging construct.

“The ability to build a grassroots network around that issue is not insignificant,” said Joel Benenson, a chief strategist for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns. “The question is can you build a durable presidential campaign on impeaching the incumbent. Keep in mind if that’s part of your campaign it is an implicit acknowledgement that the incumbent is going to win.”

Welsh Knight Geraint Wins Tour de France

Geraint Thomas, MBE, has won the Tour de France.

Tolkien as Translator