Vox Day, ‘political philosopher’?

His words. Not mine. To be fair, I’m assuming, though not implausibly, they’re Vox Day‘s in the following blurb for his latest book, Jordanetics: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker:

Jordan Peterson is believed by many to be the greatest thinker that humanity has ever known. He is Father Figure, Philosopher-King, and Prophet to the millions of young men who are his most fervent fans and followers. He is the central figure of the Intellectual Dark Web, an academic celebrity, and an unparalleled media phenomenon who has shattered all conceptions of what it means to be modern celebrity in the Internet Age.

He has, by his own admission, thought thoughts that no man has ever thought before. He has dared to dream dreams that no man has ever dreamed before.

Of course, Jordan Peterson also happens to be a narcissist, a charlatan, and an intellectual con man who doesn’t even bother to learn the subjects upon which he lectures. He is a defender of free speech who silences other speakers, a fearless free-thinker who never hesitates to run away from debates, difficult questions, and controversial issues, a philosopher who rejects the conventional definition of truth, and a learned professor who has failed to read most of the great classics of the Western canon. He is, in short, a shameless and unrepentant fraud who lacks even a modicum of intellectual integrity.

But is Jordan Peterson more than a mere fraud? Is he something more sinister, more unbalanced, and even more dangerous? In JORDANETICS: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker, political philosopher Vox Day delves deeply into the core philosophy that Jordan Peterson advocates in both his written works and his video lectures. In doing so, Day methodically builds a shocking case that will convince even the most skeptical Jordan Peterson supporter to reconsider both the man and his teachings.

Some comments:

1. Serious thinkers don’t begin an abstract or preview of their work in passive voice with the vague plural pronoun “many.”
2. Who exactly thinks “Peterson is the greatest thinker that humanity has ever known”? His peers? His fans? Historians? I hope Day has done the empirical leg-work here to support all his provocative claims in this book.
3. Philosophers aren’t aghast when other thinkers reject the “conventional definition of truth,” i.e. the correspondence theory of truth (CTT). Hegel, Nietzsche, the American pragmatists — to name a few — were no proponents of it either. Were they just intellectual frauds too?
4. Serious intellectuals, political philosophers included, avoid polemics and facetious rhetoric when criticizing someone.
5. Philosophers don’t conflate dialectic with invective. They don’t make intellectual disagreement personal. This preview is a prologue to what looks to be a hatchet job.
6. Serious intellectuals and philosophers tend not to carelessly assert dubious claims and demonstrable falsehoods in their published work. For example, is Peterson’s célébrité really comparable to the influence of a religious figure like a prophet to his fans? How does Day know these fans’ psychology so well as to claim that? Furthermore, Google Scholar shows Peterson’s work has been cited more than 10,000 times, strongly suggesting he indeed thinks “thoughts that no man has ever thought before” precisely because many other men doing original research give him credit for conclusions and ideas he’s produced. It also debunks the libelous contention that “he lacks a modicum of intellectual integrity,” as hundreds of scholars find his work worth adducing. And the notion he’s a hypocritical free-thinker “who never hesitates to to run away from debates, difficult questions, and controversial issues” is laughable. What was Peterson’s stand against Canada’s Bill C-16 about then? He’s engaged hostile journalists in interviews and debated social justice warrior professors. Is Day’s audience too drunk on Alt-Right Kool-Aid not to see through this nonsense?
7. The gratuitous hypocrisy in these four paragraphs is dumbfounding. If you’re going to condemn a man for not reading most of the seminal works of Western civilization, then don’t complain when he doesn’t maintain the CTT. Don’t decry a well-published academic as a “charlatan, an intellectual con man” when making no effort to observe the mores of the vita contemplativa, proclaiming yourself a political philosopher, and promoting your book that almost certainly is more concerned with malicious ad hominem than truth.

I’ve argued for it once before, but Day is a petty and envious sophist and ideologue. The tirade above is proof positive.

The sophistry of Vox Day: Naked revulsion for Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and anything ‘Judeo-Christian’

Maybe it’s the journalist and philosopher in me, but I don’t like Vox Day. He is a sophist, a demagogue. My background in both disciplines fostered a healthy distaste for such people. At the very least, it’s clear to see he’s not the robust intellectual he portrays himself to be—a charade that unfortunately has duped too many of my millennial peers.

How do I know this? Well, for starters, take his hatred for conservative media personality Ben Shapiro as expressed in this diatribe against him:

The relentlessly dishonest Ben Shapiro was quick to publicly deny both Jesus Christ and the Christian heritage of America while taking speedy exception to a rabbi telling Christians the truth about her religion. Shut it down! Unfortunately for the Littlest Chickenhawk, Twitter was well-informed and having none of it. Do not be deceived. Shapiro is a lying, parasitical snake; he is a Fake Right Fake American who has been artificially propped up in the media for nearly two decades in order to lead Christians and conservatives astray.

Um, okay then. But what did Shapiro actually say? Day quotes Shapiro responding via Twitter to Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg:

“Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg@TheRaDR
This might be a good time to note that ‘Judeo-Christian’ is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity.

Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
This is nonsense.

Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
Judaism and Christianity are deeply intertwined. American Christianity has generally had a deeper love for the Old Testament than European Christianity. And the vast majority of religious American Christians see the Jews as the root of the tree of Christ.

Ben Shapiro‏@benshapiro
The fact that America is Judeo-Christian and not merely Christian is a reflection of those facts”…

If one isn’t a rabid ideologue, it’s evident Day is the “relentlessly dishonest” one in his characterization of Shapiro here. Shapiro neither was “quick to publicly deny” Jesus Christ nor “the Christian heritage” of America (Yes, I know he is practicing orthodox Jew and rejects the divinity of Jesus, but he doesn’t articulate that view in the provided exchange on Twitter). The editor of The Daily Wire asserts that America is both a product of Judaism and Christianity—note the phrase “merely Christian.” Whether this is true or requires some qualification—something that Twitter’s platform makes difficult—it’s obvious Shapiro was not denying Christianity’s influence on America. I see no evidence of insincerity on his part for making the claims he does.

So, why does Day call him a “lying, parasitical snake” and a “Fake Right Fake American who has been artificially propped up in the media for nearly two decades in order to lead Christians and conservatives astray”? Why the vitriolic conspiracy theory-mongering?

Well, Day is of the Alt-Right. The Alt-Right is for the deployment of white identity politics in the face of the non-white identity politics that constitute the contemporary left. Jews, as a tribe, are not white; according to the Alt-Right, they have group interests that differ and, in some cases, are opposed to that of whites. Therefore, if America is fundamentally a white ethno-state, as the Alt-Right contends, then Jews are a foreign group who work against the social and political dominance of whites in their own countries and must be defeated. That’s why the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about “the Jews controlling everything behind the scenes” have found a comfortable home within the Alt-Right. The notion that the Western civilization, Christianity, and, by extension, America have roots in Judaism and Jewish Biblical narrative, which is true, is something Alt-Right anti-Semites like Day, who maintain America, Europe, and the West were formed by and can only be predominantly for whites, can’t ideologically stomach.

This explains Day’s irrational praising of “well-informed” red-pillers on Twitter who supposedly put the nefarious Shapiro in his place.

Crew@CarborundumCrew
Ben, there is no Judeo-Christ!

Heather Anne@cler_morgaine
Judaism and Christianity are both *Abrahamic* faiths. The term ‘judeo-christian’ is used to to fake religious pluralism while excluding Islam, which arguably has more in common with both than they do each other.

Dr. Ramone, Esq.@melvinramone
Judaism rejects the core premise of Christianity. You’re making up facts.

Cornelius Rye@CorneliusRye2
It’s literally not. It’s a very recent invention by YOUR PEOPLE. Jews have very little to do with America pre-WWII.

JOHNMEYER@JOHNMEY28401489
You represent Talmudism. Different thing.

#BroniesForTrump@GWSSDelta
White evangelical Christians’ rate Jews 69 out of 100, but Jews rate evangelical Christians 34 out of 100. I look forward to the day when Christians wake up from the “Judeo-Christian” “greatest ally” con and realize that Jews hate them.

Emprah’sFinest@SamHydeShooter
Please tell me which of the Founders was a Jew.

Deplorable Unum 🇮🇹@deplorable_unum
Wrong. America predates the 20th Century, when the “Judeo-Christan”  term first appeared. Stop trying to rewrite America history, little Benny.

The Forgotten Man@_ForgottenMan
As many of the presidents of the past have said, “This is a Christian nation.” The Judeo-Christian makes no sense, Judaism and Christianity are two very different religions.

These are red herrings that don’t refute the claim that America and the West owe much of their cultural heritage to Jewish monotheism, legalism, and the Imago Dei to which Shapiro, charitably interpreted, was referring. These and other ideas, which originate in Judaism, undergird—dare I say it—a “Judeo-Christian” value system that has been highly influential in the development of the West. It’s irrelevant if the term “Judeo-Christian” is a 20th century neologism, if some Jews have used it to advance their ethnic interests, or some people use it to promote “religious pluralism”, i.e. multiculturalism. Its referent, the object to which it refers, is real whether Day and company recognize it.

Likewise, Judaism indeed is a different religion than Christianity. But so what? Christianity and its revelation of the New Testament only makes sense in light of the Old Testament and its narratives and prophecies involving the Jewish people. At least, that’s how millions of Christians understand the Bible.

And no, acknowledging these cultural ties does not entail that I and other Christians are following “Judeo-Christ,” a supposedly humanist idol, instead of Jesus Christ. I don’t know how Day and some Alt-Righties go from a belief in an intertwined cultural inheritance shared with Jews to blasphemy for a secular pseudo-religion, but it’s the sort of dialectical slipperiness and presumptuous assertion befitting the most deliberately opaque continental thinkers. Less of a Christian—at least not in a meaningful sense—and more of a white nationalist, Day endeavors to obscure what’s plain and true to satisfy the tribalism he preaches.

It’s also hard to mistake the stench of jealousy wafting from his frequent assaults on Shapiro and now Jordan Peterson. Their influence on the right far surpasses Day’s. They’re also critical of the Alt-Right, and Day’s reaction to their criticisms and their profound popularity is telling. He not only name-calls (e.g. “Littlest Chickenhawk” for Shapiro and Peterson, the “nutcase,” who “is objectively stupid”), he denounces them as malevolently dangerous. They’re shams, charlatans, props for our globalist overlords in order to immunize white men from any red pill dissident geniuses like Day can bestow. You see, for Day, being a classical liberal, which both Shapiro and Peterson are, makes you “a leftist.” Advocating individual personal responsibility apparently implies denying your racial and other group identities. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” seems to be Day’s angry tune.

Sorry, I’m not marching to this fife; these are not the pronouncements of someone who is interested in the truth. They are in no way “substantive.” Rather, they’re the envious polemics of a man consumed by an ideology that rejects who and what each of us are fundamentally—persons whose being comes from our rational animal nature as created and sustained by God. It’s in this way more than any other in which Day and the Alt-Right are just the inverse image, a photo negative, of the social justice warrior whom they despise. To both, we all are just merely tokens of racial and or sexual types. Either way, we spiritually desecrate ourselves, as well as others, with the proliferation of such false identification.

Avoid both extremes and those who espouse them. Look for less paranoid, more intellectually rigorous voices on the right.

Steven Crowder on David Hogg

As a bit followup to yesterday’s post, here’s conservative YouTube funnyman Steven Crowder on David Hogg, Leftist Christ Superstar.

Oh, and for those rankled by my not so subtle but clever suggestion that Hogg is like sadistic, child-murdering Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones, Crowder cleverly but not so subtly compares You-Know-Who to Hitler. So…I’m not the worst.

David Hogg: The ‘vicious idiot’ who would be king

David Hogg is a real piece of work. Really. It’s time to take off the kiddie gloves.

During the last two months, the teenager-turned-activist who survived the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting has burned through any goodwill he’s had for undergoing something highly traumatic and being wet behind the ears. Hogg’s proved himself to be a vile demagogue and an exception to the saying, “Only bad things happen to good people.”

Here’s a few of his greatest hits, as compiled by Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire staff and then mirrored by YouTuber TRUTHBOMBS:

For my mind, Shapiro, who has come down the hardest on Hogg among the conservative commentariat, is still too generous to the brat. He claims he is withholding judgment about whether Hogg is a nice guy outside of politics earlier in the video. Please. As exemplified above, the teenager has serially slandered Dana Loesch, Marco Rubio, the NRA to the point that his tirades push what’s normative for political discourse even in these polarized times. Sorry, Ben, media prop or not, a foul-mouthed, arrogant student who regularly and remorselessly bears false witness against his neighbors is not a mensch. Surviving a shooting is not a license to demand the infringement of people’s gun rights and be insufferable about it.

Hogg’s worse than that, though. This latest episode in which he’s orchestrated an advertiser boycott against Fox News’ Laura Ingraham also shows he’s thin-skinned and vindictive. For those who need to be caught up, Ingraham took time on Twitter to pick on Hogg for being rejected by some colleges in California. Since then, he and Media Matters have incited several companies to pull their advertising from her show, prompting the Fox talk show host to offer an apology, which he’s rebuffed.

On what grounds, you ask? Well, see for yourself the wisdom that spouted wondrously from Hogg’s own mouth:

I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I️ in this fight. It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children. https://t.co/H0yWs4zMGk

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 29, 2018

How gracious, humble, and sincere the left’s new favorite talisman is! “I’m [emphasis mine] not the issue here,” and “when people try to distract, like Laura is doing right now, from what the real issue here is…,” said the precocious prince of the left’s effort to gut the Second Amendment and who could choose to make peace with Ingraham at any time. It looks like our rising star has a taste for exerting power upon people, making them squirm, making them hurt.

Don’t believe me? Well, apparently this dust-up with Ingraham isn’t the first time Hogg has gone out of his way to screw with someone’s livelihood for slighting him or his friends. Go ask the Redondo Beach, Calif., lifeguard who was put under review due in some part to Hogg’s footage of this confrontation between that lifeguard and a member of Hogg’s crew, who was recalcitrant about being admonished for covering a trash can at a beach with his boogie board.

Yeah, the lifeguard’s punishment really seems to fit his crime, if you can call his conduct with Hogg’s associate that. Our boy wonder apparently isn’t a fan of lex talionis. I, however, doubt he knows what that means even though he’s fixated on handing out deserts he believes are just to those who oppose him. A 4.1 GPA isn’t a reliable indicator of knowledge these days, though it might correlate with a grossly inflated sense of one’s capability to solve incredibly complex social problems, such as gun violence, specifically school shootings.

What’s perhaps even more ironic, which I’m sure others have pointed out, is that the left has gone all-in with the caustic, spoiled millennial as the face of its tyrannical gun control agenda, and he is unlikeable enough for it to all backfire. He’s sanctimonious, grudging, self-obsessed, and, worst of all, conceited enough to believe he knows how best to fix what ails society, i.e., “…our parents don’t know how to use a fucking democracy, so we have to.” The left has anointed someone who embodies the sort of authoritarian personality for which the right to bear arms exists—a foolish, self-righteous megalomaniac impulsive and vengeful enough to trample those he believes are beneath him. After the Parkland massacre, that’s gun-toting America and her political representatives. Although psychopath Nikolas Cruz pulled the trigger, for Hogg, everyone else is equally culpable and must have their liberty curtailed.

He’s basically Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones. No, really, the two are more alike than different: Both are entitled, come from well-connected families (it’s not by accident that Hogg has been quickly and regularly thrust in front of the camera across the country), feign either victimhood, heroism, or machismo when it suits their purposes, sic others on their political enemies to destroy them, boast irritating smirks and sneers, and clearly are products of incest—ideological incest, that is, for Hogg. All he needs to do is go blond and murder two whores for fun with a crossbow (I hear, however, he has something against bearing personal arms).

You don’t think he’s that evil? Sure, but hair dye is readily available; plus, given his background and exploits from the last several months, it’s evident he’s got potential.

Am I being too provocative? Too unfair? Too harsh in suggesting that the Iron Throne from the early GOT seasons fits? Well, at the very least, it’s fair to opine that something very sharp and pointy is far up his ass, and he needs to be slapped repeatedly, so to speak, for it. This is in part to show conservatives that their hands won’t fall from their wrists for striking a “vicious idiot king,” but also to drive home the point that civility is for the civil. Contra Matt Walsh, the cankerous Hogg can’t be ignored because he’s not going anywhere, at least not until his handlers realize he’s more trouble than he’s worth. Reasoned debate with him or his enablers is not possible and thereby a losing bet. In order to get rid of him, we mustn’t be afraid to resort to ridicule and mockery, especially because Hogg thoroughly deserves them for his smug demagoguery. Doing so is not character assassination because the boy who would be king hasn’t got any. As Bronn, another character from GOT, observes about Joffrey,

Indeed, Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. Indeed.

On the ‘Polish death camps’ controversy

The Washington Post reported that Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signed into law a bill outlawing the use of language that associates Poland as responsible for the Holocaust. Within it, penalties for the phrases like “Polish death camps” could include up to jail time for potential violators.

This move has reaped a backlash, but not for the right reasons, I fear. The concerns over free speech and historical debate are ones I share. It’s reprobate and tyrannical to criminalize the articulation of certain kinds of phrases.

However, the lion’s share — or at least loudest — critics condemn Poland’s government here not so much with liberal ideals of free expression in mind, but for anti-semitism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, implies Polish officials are guilty of Holocaust denial. Yair Lapid went as far to tweet:

I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that.

— יאיר לפיד (@yairlapid) January 27, 2018

I find Netanyahu’s and Lapid’s reactions unhinged. “Polish death camps,” as anyone with a basic understanding of the World War II and the Holocaust knows, is a misleading term. Auschwitz, Treblinka, and many of those horrendous places were Nazi installations located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Putting aside the law seemingly is clumsy in what it permits and just ill-conceived legislation, it’s understandable that the Polish government doesn’t want Poles to be defamed as genocidal butchers as culpable as the Third Reich.

Ah, but what about Polish collaborators or Polish anti-semitism before, during, and after the events in question? Like the Jedwabne and Kielce pogroms?

Well, what about them? It’s consistent to recognize both that the camps in occupied Poland were Nazi in origin and administration, and Polish anti-semitism was contemporaneous and played a factor in the Holocaust. Is anyone of consequence in the civilized world denying the evil of either of them? This isn’t to say Poland doesn’t have a history of anti-semistism prior, during, and after the war, or anti-semitism isn’t significant force in the world today (on the contrary, I affirm the negation of both claims). However, atrocities like Jedwabne, Kielce, and other unsettling anecdotes of Polish misconduct involving Jews and their Nazi killers — acts committed by a relatively small few in a nation of millions — though perhaps inspired and or coaxed by the Nazis, weren’t part of the Holocaust as it pertains to the operation of the extermination camps as implied by the imprecise phrase “Polish death camps” at the center of this controversy. Overall, these regrettable acts are irrelevant to the matter at hand, namely whether Poland as a nation — not some number of individual Poles or segments of the Polish underground — can be credibly blamed as part of the Holocaust or anti-semitism wholesale.

Moreover, Lapid’s tweet leaves no room to distinguish between those among the conquered Poles who assisted the Nazis and those who didn’t actively resist their rule. It implies both were equally complicit in the systematic extirpation of European Jewry.

It also disregards the ethical difficulties of the Polish situation during World War II. Keep in mind Polish Slavs weren’t considered perfect Aryan specimens either. Viewed as inferior, they too were sent to the camps to be killed. Perhaps every living Pole at the time in Poland ought to have risen up against the barbarism of the Nazis, but Lapid ignores that every living Pole at the time in Poland had a gun to their heads — that, everyday Poles were under duress, oppressed, and faced a legitimate moral dilemma. As such, some, whatever their feelings toward Jews, decided their best option at survival was to keep their heads down or unfortunately even abet the Nazis. Even if some of this behavior was based in anti-semitism, it’s unfair, with almost 80 years of hindsight, to denounce categorically the Poles for some Poles failing to be decent human beings when mired in indecent circumstances.

It seems because there existed some Polish collaborators and anti-semites, Poland can’t be largely seen as innocent of the Holocaust or the great European anti-semitic ether from which it apparently materialized (never mind that many Poles risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis and the long, complex history between Jews and Poles). As Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is recorded in The Guardian:

The Jewish people, the state of Israel, and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognised for its horrors and atrocities…Also among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offence, must be condemned. They must be examined and revealed.

So given the examples of Netanyahu, Lapid, and Rivlin, the outrage here seems to be all about collective guilt-mongering. That, European anti-semitism wholesale is responsible for the Holocaust. And non-Jews, especially those of European descent, must always be aware of that and the fact that they and or their fellow countrymen have ancestors who committed heinous crimes against Jews seemingly in order to foster a perpetual feeling of penitence.

Let me be lucid: I don’t buy those anti-semitic conspiracy theories about the “Jews controlling everything” found on the far right. They repulse me. Plus, I’m far from callous about Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis.

However, it’s obvious there are prominent Jews and Israelis who are invested in promoting a simplified narrative about what happened in Poland before, during, and after World War II to impute guilt, I suspect, on the non-guilty for ethnocentric reasons. There’s too many who equivocate “Poland,” “Polish people,” and other similar phrases, as well as fail to use “the Holocaust” univocally, for it to be otherwise. It’s tribalism, us vs. them, Jews against gentiles/whites identity politics. Lest we forget, identity politics led to the Holocaust, whose victims’ descendants ironically are not above engaging in their own version of them. So I call them out for it.

See Danusha V. Goska for a nuanced take on the relationship between Poles and Jews.

All you need to know to reject Black Lives Matter

That is, unless you’re insane.

Anyway, putting aside the rabble rousing, pillaging, burning of the very communities they claim to champion and the chanting, “Pigs in a blanket! Fry ’em like bacon!” there’s always this little habit of Black Lives Matters “protesters.”

BLM activists told white media to get to the back today. pic.twitter.com/r1wyNHwgM0

— Jillian Melchior (@JillianKayM) July 26, 2016

Ah, I love the smell of irony in the morning. If only the good Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks could see their descendants piss on their inheritance. The brave men and women of the the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s did not suffer indignity and physical harm for spoiled demagogues to exercise their own brand of racist violence and humiliation 50 years later.

Now, maybe this was covered in professional activist camp, but I thought the idea of a protest is to make a public scene to draw attention on your cause. This is sort of counter-intuitive, don’t you think, limiting your exposure? The press, after all, are the public’s eyes and ears.

Secondly, BLM have a right to organize and protest, but it doesn’t have a right to racially segregate the press. Media are there on behalf of the public and are agents representing the public’s right to information for self-governance. If you’re going to make a hullabaloo, it can’t infringe on other people’s and institutions’ First Amendment rights to document it. Same thing happened with the BLM-affiliated protesters at the University of Missouri with Tim Tai and Mark Schierbecker. There’s no legal or moral standing for what these despicable megalomaniacs are doing.

Please tell me how these racists are not driven by hatred and stupidity. Spare me the meaningless distinction about black people can only be prejudiced and not racist because they don’t have institutional power bullshit. Tell that to the six Baltimore cops charged by state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby, who hastily brought the full force of her office down upon them, in the Freddie Gray trial. You have to go to college — which not everyone does — and specialize in black studies — which many college attendees don’t — to know what Critical Race Theory is and how its tenets-as-tentacles skull-jockey the otherwise very hollow noggins of BLM supporters. Captured above is racism as it is colloquially understood. Even resorting to such semantic games, distinguishing between prejudice and racism, is ineffective because technically BLM is an institution and wielding institutional power to segregate on a whim. This is overtly unconstitutional and anti-civil rights.

Speaking of college, notice how many of these self-appointed defenders of blacks tend to be people who are privileged and educated. They never seem to need food, shelter, clothing or other fundamentals of existence. Instead, they apparently have the time and energy to be so idealistic as to put their ideals into practice. You don’t see struggling, impoverished individuals so lucky, yet these self-appointed champions of the downtrodden claim to speak for them. Social justice warriors are bourgeoisie who loathe everything about bourgeoisieness. Philosopher Roger Scruton has their number:

 Activist campaigns, which tend to be conducted in the name of the people as a whole, neither consult the people nor show much interest in noticing them—a point that was noticeable to Burke, in considering the insolence of the French revolutionaries. Such campaigns are affairs of elites who are seeking to triumph over real or imaginary adversaries, and who make an impact on politics because they share, in their hearts, the old socialist view that things must be changed from the top downwards, and that the people themselves are not to be trusted now, but only later, when the revolutionary vanguard has completed its task.

Bingo! The same applies to BLM and all its splinter chapters. It’s a movement doomed to fail. It’s too abrasively racist to win over potential allies, it’s message too unpalatable for normal people across the political spectrum. It’s primary methods of persuasion is guilt-mongering via slander, to which only self-flagellating individuals are susceptible. Most self-respecting people who are white don’t take too kindly to being smeared as a de facto racist. And to those, who out of some perversely false sense of responsibility and accept such unfair condemnation, such epithets don’t inspire loyalty but obedience out of fear. BLM is a band of tyrants who, between the language policing enforced by social stigma and rioting to disrupt the rule of law as an more overt form of intimidation, use both soft and hard methods of totalitarian control. If it wasn’t for that detestable species called journalist providing uncritical coverage as life support, this organized manifestation of wickedness masquerading as justice would be moribund already.

God-willing, it will be soon,

Modus Pownens

God save the queen: Brexit succeeds!

Our cousins across the pond have decided bravely to be citizens solely subjected to their self-deliberation instead of an unelected, bloated and corrupt Euro bureau-superstate. With 97.4% reporting, I think it’s safe to announce the referendum to leave the European Union passed.

I have the utmost admiration and only good wishes to express unto the British who chose to be British again — shocking, I know. So bravo! We Americans owe much to them, especially culturally and in regard to our legalism.

Perhaps we can learn from their example here and be in their debt again. Brexit is not only a blow struck for conservatism and smaller, limited government against that prowling leviathan of a cephalopod called Cthulhu. Given the normative multiculturalism riving our societies, it maybe indicates the West is rediscovering that cortical line running down its back and, in emulation of Myllokunmingia, beginning to act like a new sort of creature comfortable with its own body — a primordial, natural instinct that is viewed nowadays as revolutionary. Anyway, historic, paradigm-altering events like this one prod me ever so slightly to peer into that maelstrom known as time and just sort of make out a blurry future within which Western civilization is redeemed and salvaged. Brexit serves me that little indulgence of hope.

But this triumphant day isn’t about me and my saturnine ruminations but the blessed British. So, God save Boris Johnson; God save Nigel Farage; and God save the queen! Most of all, though, God save the British!

Cheerio!

Modus Pownens

Addendum to Trump, Hitler and the rise of fascism

For those who require the long answer (the short answer) to whether that New York real estate mogul and reality TV star is the American reincarnation of Der Fuhrer, it’s hell no.

We’re good, right?

No? You’re going to make me spell it out for you? Well, I guess for the sake of posterity…

…The Donald is admittedly a lot of things, many of which are unflattering. Narcissistic—sure. Misogynistic—check. Will say anything to get elected—most definitely.

But it bears mentioning that it’s cute that the Left abruptly now discovers standards about the character of the president when the Democrats’ front runner is a dishonest, incompetent felon in bed with Wall Street. I’m also compelled to point out that Obama is also an extreme egotist who had an eerie cult of personality when his sunny aura burst onto the presidential election landscape.

Um…

Chris Matthews could barely contain himself either.

 

As for Trump’s sexism, whatever his indiscretions are in this regard, they probably pale in comparison to the exploits of Bill Clinton, who was not shy in the Oval Office, or the extramarital excesses of JFK. Both former leaders of the free world were and are undoubtedly womanizers.

In regard to Trump’s campaign rhetoric promising accomplishments that are constitutionally illegal for his office, it’s sort of adorable that someone would believe this mouthing off is unique to him. How exactly will that angry, socialist Muppet Bernie Sanders going to make student debt go POOF! and implement free college for all? By diktat? His magic redistributive powers that he developed at Eugene V. Deb’s Institute for the Socially Cranky? Or will he perform a snazzy show-tune scored by the Electric Mayhem with family-friendly, social justice-themed lyrics that will make all of his constituent’s inequality problems go away?

Anyway, this notion that American elections are decided by the public objectively picking the qualitatively best candidate based on their policies, if not always, has been a fanciful myth for many, many passed horizons. Our politics is very much now a popularity contest, where the candidates bloody each other to the point that whoever looks the least evil at the end wins. Plus, mainstream journalists these days are too corrupt and intellectually inept to actually scrutinize the feasibility of any proposed policies. They’re, for example, more concerned with catching and construing Jeb! Bush as racially insensitive for uttering the term “anchor baby” in regard to immigration instead of vetting his policy ideas on the matter. Beholden to political correctness and identity politics, news media are a hatchet keen on character assassination, not the investigation of issues and candidates in a sterile, analytical process devoid of innuendo.

Digression aside, what about Trump’s supposed mean, racist comments on Mexicans and Muslims? It’s like Hitler and the Nazi’s scapegoating the Jews!

I shouldn’t be laughing, but that moratorium to secure our border is nothing like blaming Jews for everything, forcing them to wear stars for identification, segregating them in ghettos and then shipping them to places called Buchenwald, Dachau or Auschwitz for those once-in-a-lifetime showers. To my knowledge, no one reasonable in this country, not even the hyperbolic Trump, has called for the systematic rounding-up of Mexicans or Muslims for genocide.

But isn’t he spreading “hate”? Well, according to the latest available FBI statistics (2014) reported hate crimes are down from the year before, and for religious-motivated bias, Jews are vastly targeted more than Muslims. Surely, these bigoted feelings Trump allegedly has been coaxing out into the open have been festering long before 2014. Yet, there doesn’t appear to be a noticeable uptick in anti-Muslim or anti-Latino hate crimes to correspond with this supposed rising white supremacist miasma threatening minorities that Trump’s allegedly personifies.

What about the violence at his rallies? Of course, his supporters who engage in it are reprehensible. And Trump is morally obligated not to be flippant within his oratories to encourage it. Once again, however, political disagreement meted out in fisticuffs isn’t anything new to American politics. Additionally, at what point do we grant the lion’s share of moral responsibility to the individual goons, who for whatever reason, belligerently react to anti-Trump protesters?

Moreover, the violence that does occur seems to be contained at his rallies. It’s not like there are roving bands of Trumpite stormtroopers harassing and intimidating ideological dissidents to ensure Trump’s election to office like the Nazi’s SA. What is happening are pugnacious troops of social justice warriors marauding and rioting to disrupt their political opposition’s right to assembly.

If anyone is guilty of anything that looks like Nazi political violence, it’s those who support Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Perhaps they should be held accountable for their sycophants. Perhaps media need to acknowledge their own hateful and slanderous rhetoric obtusely comparing Trump to some of the most vile men in history, which now is likely inspiring actual acts of organized terror and thuggery.

It’s true Trump’s sudden rise is in response to American political Leftism rooted in Marxism just as fascism arose to combat European and Soviet communism. I also concede that our country’s cultural rot has parallels to Weimar Germany. Yet, the similarities stop there.

Of course, we should be vigilant for ultra-populist strongmen coming to power. And certainly, the gradual erosion of our constitutional republic—the deterioration of which jerked forward under Obama—lays the foundation for men like Hitler and Mussolini to seduce the desperate masses. But Trump, despite his numerous flaws, is just not one of them. The braggadocio in The Art of the Deal is not the anti-semitic angst of Mein Kampf. More seriously, there aren’t the sort of atrocities like Kristallnacht emanating from his campaign. His rallies resemble nothing like Leni Riefenstahl’s footage of Hitler and the Nazis: For instance, there’s no saber rattling that consists of divisions of men marching to frighten the rest of Europe nor the neo-Roman iconography hinting at the Third Reich’s imperial ambitions.

To suggest Trump is the political embodiment of burgeoning American fascism probably indicates despicable defamatory intent and or gross historical ignorance. For those who are committed to such shibboleths, I only have these four words:

Sieg heil, scheiße köpfe!

Modus Pownens

Trump, Hitler and the rise of fascism

This one will be short for what I hope are obvious reasons.

Is Trump and his ascendancy to the ever more likely Republican nomination worthy of comparison to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and fascism?

The short answer: no.

That is all,

Modus Pownens

The curious case of the Christian abortion cake

Consider the following: A woman walks into a Christian bakery called Immaculate Risings, named in double entendre to Jesus’ resurrection and the nature of dough rising when in an oven. The woman proceeds to the counter to make her order. After the baker comes out to greet and serve the potential customer, the woman requests a cake made to commemorate her college-aged daughter’s first abortion. The baker apologizes and says he cannot bake such a cake because it violates his sincerely held religious convictions to consciously help celebrate what he feels is murder, citing the Sixth Commandment and the implications about the unborn found in Jeremiah 1:5. Furious, the woman threatens legal action for what she deems as sexist prejudice and storms out of the bakery.

Is this scenario unjust discrimination? Did this baker plausibly deny service to this woman solely because of the sex of her daughter and presumably the animus he holds against women? Can it be reasonably inferred this baker has a problem serving women simply because they’re female?

I hope it’s obvious that the answers to all these questions are no, and any other charge of sexism can be swiftly dismissed as absurd. To stay in business, the baker must clearly serve women all the time. The refusal to bake the hypothetical abortion cake is such a specialized order in a highly particular case, it can’t be concluded that the baker’s customer service, both singularly or comprehensively, is inclined to not cater to women on the basis of their sex. In the word of its loudest advocates, an abortion is a choice after all — a choice distinct from the chooser’s personhood regardless if the act is only biologically possible for one sex. Logically speaking, I don’t find femininity, in every sense of the word, as purely identical to the decisions made involving feminine reproductive biology in a similar way playing football isn’t purely identical to throwing the pigskin. Though, I do concede that both seeking procedures for feminine reproductive organs and throwing a football are strongly associated with being a woman and playing football.

Metaphysics and or logical relationships aside, I think it’s safe to claim that there is nothing we could consider here as discriminatory with the case of the abortion cake. Permitting the baker to refuse the order for his religious reasons is not giving a carte blanche for further discrimination. It’s actually an apt example of “tolerance” in a culturally diverse society. I therefore submit the much publicized instances of bakers, florists, photographers or innkeepers not providing service to a same-sex wedding for a gay couple is very much the same thing.

There is no meaningful difference between them. Both pertain to declining to support a decision freely acted upon that is separate from personhood. It’s the act the Christian objects to endorse and not the people themselves, whether they be gay or female. Choosing to have an abortion is not equivalent to being a woman, and deciding to marry is not equivalent to being gay. Therefore, the alleged slippery slope of allowing a foothold for future discrimination is greatly unlikely. Apart from making the critical distinction between a person and a choice a person makes, they’re cases so particular that they cannot be applied as representative of every commercial interaction a Christian baker, florist and the like knowingly has with a gay individual. There too is scriptural basis, like Genesis 2:18-24, among many other passages, as to why a Christian would feel like he or she would violate his religious and ethical conscious if he or she was asked to provide a cake, bouquet, pictures or venue for a same-sex marriage.

So I earnestly ask: If the Christian is not guilty of discrimination in the case of the abortion cake, why does the scenarios with same-sex marriages, cakes, bouquets, etc., are instances of bigotry like Jim Crow laws? I’m sure there are those who will become cross at the notion that a same-sex wedding is comparable to a murder, but the moral severity of the acts isn’t what’s at issue. In the Christian’s mind, they both are conscious decisions to defy God’s will, and to celebrate sin is, in its own right, a grave sin. Also, to suppose the LGBTQ community is more susceptible to discrimination because women make up about generally half of a business owner’s customer base is a political dead end and a bit of a stretch. According to the Left’s own narrative of victimhood, both are woefully oppressed classes of people with large swaths of America predisposed against them for being what and who they are. For the Left to claim one group of victims is less discriminated than another, especially when women roughly account for 50.8 percent of the population and the LGBTQ approximately is less than 3 percent, is political capital it won’t waste. Plus, the effort required to actually nuance its arguments and rhetoric for the national conversation just seems so out of character when defamation and oversimplification has worked wonders for its agenda. I don’t see the average progressive social justice crusader changing his or her tune here to be that the supposed irrational, prejudicial Christian conservative business owner rationally selects not to discriminate against women while figuring that Adam and Steve is fair game because of some shrewd economic calculus. It just seems even a little too farfetched even by Leftist fairytale standards.

Anywho, I’m merely arguing for the ideal of religious liberty the first Americans had in mind when they came to these shores. You know, the negative liberty to live one’s faith without having the state forcing one to violate the ‘ole religiously influenced, moral conscious. What good is religious freedom if it’s relegated to a place of worship for one hour a week and to the privacy of one’s own domicile? Reasonably speaking, if a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist and whoever else can’t apply their faith-based tenets to every aspect of their existence like their personal business, it hardly seems like they’re dwelling in the land of the free.

Isn’t what I’m describing the sacred “tolerance” of the Left? Or is “tolerance” affirming one worldview to dominate at the expense of others? According to the dictionary and I, it’s the former; for many of today’s liberals, it’s unfortunately the latter. It makes one wonder where did all the good, classical liberals go, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and company?

They’ve been dead for a very long time,

Modus Pownens