Tag Archives: Identity Politics

The Curious Case of Unnecessary Pronoun Lists

21 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in Gender, Identity Politics, Political Correctness, Uncategorized

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A subset of my LinkedIn connections list “preferred pronouns” after their names, but I don’t think I’ve ever had any misapprehensions about their “gender identities”. Not one of them. Their “gendentities” are obvious based on the names and/or photos they’ve chosen to use on social media. In fact, the “default” pronoun designations in the English language work pretty well that way. So, apart from the fact that LinkedIn invites its users to list pronouns, why do these people bother? Would they introduce themselves that way in person? “Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Jane Smith, she / her.” Maybe on a name tag. Otherwise, unlikely.

Let’s face it: precious few of us have any doubt about our own biological sex. Do you have a penis and no vagina? Or vice versa? That settles it! But if you wish you didn’t have a penis, or wish you did, or you’re not sure… then you have a gender quandary and a pronoun problem. Still, those who decide to “take” one gender via transition will have chosen their pronouns. They typically make an effort to “present” that way as well.

There’s a tiny minority of individuals whose biological sex is ambiguous, and there are others who simply consider themselves “non-binary” or “genderqueer”. They represent three to four people out of every 1,000, if a recent survey can be believed (and surveys like this can be terribly flawed). These people are actually included in the broad definition of transgender. But again, for biological or other reasons, they identify as neither male nor female. It would be natural for these individuals to prefer gender-neutral pronouns (for example, possibilities are they / them and zi / hir, rather than he / him or she / her). That’s understandable, but: 1) using the plural “they” as a singular pronoun can lead to awkward grammar, inviting the use of the plural verb form as a fix*; and 2) remembering different pronouns for different people is a complexity to which most of us are quite unaccustomed. This is a practical issue, and social encounters with non-binaries are fairly unusual for most of us.

If tolerating the use of “he” or “she” just won’t do for this tiny minority, even as a courtesy to the “unschooled”, then it must be very important to make one’s non-binary status clear to everyone. That suggests a different problem, and one of a psychological nature. The insistence on strict adherence to alternative pronouns reflects a narcissism common to most manifestations of identity politics. And no, there is no reliable research showing that use of non-gendered pronouns reduces non-binary suicides, as one advocacy group has claimed.

I speak as one who has been called by the wrong gendered pronoun! I’m a male and I’m confident I present that way. However, I’ve worked with many Chinese over the course of my career, and gendered pronouns aren’t used in Chinese. The distinctions between “he” and “she”, or “his” and “hers”, can be as foreign to them as the pronouns “zi” and “hir” are to me. I’ve heard myself referenced by Chinese colleagues as “she”. Did it offend me? Not at all, because I knew the speaker was not fluent in the English language.

It should be easy to tolerate members of a minority who get it wrong because we empathize with their language challenge. We don’t demand their absolute conformity, but they understand their minority status and might prefer to avoid the potential embarrassment of getting it wrong. Contrary-wise, if I’m in the minority, say at a gathering of Chinese, shall I press the issue by demanding that every member of the majority distinguish between me and my wife using the correct English pronouns? I think not. But non-binary activists are so offended by gendered pronouns, which have been in common use among English speakers for centuries, that they demand the majority change the language to accommodate them. That is unreasonable. It’s okay to let others know what you prefer, but you shouldn’t feel slighted by every miscue or be a complete prig about it!

Now, if you happen to be a plain-old binary individual, what’s your excuse for listing preferred pronouns on social media? It seems completely unnecessary, so why bother? Here are a few possibilities:

  • You have transitioned to your gender and list pronouns as a courtesy to anyone who knew you before your transition.
  • You are an HR functionary having a career imperative to signal your evenhandedness.
  • You are a plaintiffs attorney chasing genderqueer discrimination business.
  • You simply like the Chinese practice and want to adopt gender-neutral pronouns. Good luck at your high school reunion!

My guess is that pecuniary and career motives are less important to most pronoun-listers than simple political correctness. Either way, it’s a virtue signal. Of course, you might have non-binary friends or relatives and wish to demonstrate to the world your unerring respect for their preferences. That’s admirable loyalty, but it’s an unnecessary compulsion.

Pronoun lists seem designed to announce support for all things LGBTQ+. I also suspect that some believe it more firmly establishes their socially progressive bona fides, that the pronoun-lister is beyond reproach no matter the nasty capitalists for whom they might toil. Therefore, announcing one’s preference for default pronouns seems both unnecessary and pretentious.

I am fairly tolerant of the notion that gender identity can transcend biology in some individuals. However, that is a controversial metaphysical assertion that many do not accept. Certainly, a decision to reject one’s biological sex should not be made hastily. In particular, these decisions should not be encouraged in children except for cases in which biological sex is ambiguous and where medical procedures might be appropriate. Yet LGBTQ+ doctrine teaches that questioning one’s gender identity should be normalized, even among impressionable children. That is highly objectionable and even abusive. Persuading straights to engage in pronoun pretensions of the kind described above is part of the LGBTQ+ crusade to normalize gender dysphoria.

Beyond all that, changing the structure of the English language to accommodate LGBTQ+ advocates requires a change in language curriculum for young children. One might object on purely grammatical grounds, but it would also raise questions as to why dual sets of pronouns are necessary. To whom do these pronouns apply? That broaches the sensitive topic of gender fluidity that many parents and taxpayers do not wish to be taught as standard curriculum in elementary or even secondary schools. I’m inclined to agree with them.

My general attitude is “whatever floats your boat, but leave me out of it”. I submit that the use of non-gendered pronouns is not “owed” to anyone. It would be easier for the rarefied non-binaries to accept the same fluidity with respect pronouns that they profess with respect to their own gender identities.

* I have occasionally used plural pronouns (they, them, and their) with plural verb forms in reference to “one”, “someone”, or “you”), who might be either male or female. In those cases, the sentence is meant to apply to both genders, but I admit it’s sloppy writing.

Equal *Mattering* Under Ethics, Law and Community

04 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in Identity Politics, racism, Uncategorized

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How many white lives is a single black life worth? It seems so easy to pin that down, but if you think it’s okay to say “black lives matter”, but not to say “all lives matter”, the implication is that one black life is worth more than one white life. Anyone who insists on that should take the following litmus test. 

A classic dilemma discussed by ethicists involves situations of mortal danger in which a life or lives might be sacrificed in order to save other lives. Variants of it come up again and again in the effort to tune software for autonomous vehicles. It’s also a simple tool for challenging assertions about the values of different lives, or whether different lives “matter”.

Suppose that two pedestrians step into the path of your vehicle. You can save them only by swerving, killing a single pedestrian standing at the curb. Most would agree the car should swerve, but the answer might change under certain circumstances. Forget about the argument that the two in your path weren’t careful, so they “deserve” die. We just don’t know what caused them to proceed, or what might have distracted them.

What if the two in your path are elderly, using walkers and dragging oxygen tanks, while the pedestrian at the curb is a healthy child. Does that matter? Do we weigh the sacrifice of many potential life-years as well as a higher quality of life? People might feel less certain about that choice.

Now let’s suppose that all three pedestrians are healthy, young adults. Does it matter that any of the pedestrians are black? The one on the the curb, or the two in your path? Of course not! The truly “colorblind” answer is to swerve regardless of race. You are an obvious racist if you think otherwise. The sacrifice of one white life is certainly worth saving two black lives; the sacrifice of one black life is certainly worth saving two white lives. Black lives and white lives matter equally. 

Our Constitution and ethical standards dictate that lives are equal, that we are equal before the law, that we that we have equal rights to speak, worship, and enjoy the fruits of our labors, including the unchallenged right to property we might acquire. Under the law, and in all of our social interactions, we must be accorded equal consideration regardless of extraneous characteristics such as race. All of us have the same promise of life and opportunities to pursue happiness, and to make of our lives what we can or will. However, none of this entitles us to equal happiness, romance, and material well being.

Now, detractors will say all that misses the point. The value of black lives has been discounted for centuries, they say, as evidenced in disparate treatment by police, prosecutors, juries, employers, neighbors, social clubs, and places of business. Of course it’s true that racism has a long history throughout the world, and at one time or other it has been turned against virtually every race or religion in existence. If you think in this day and age that racism doesn’t exist elsewhere, think again.

Slavery was a tragic reality in the U.S. until 155 years ago, but it was certainly not unique to the U.S. Jim Crow laws that prevented blacks from participating equally in many aspects of life were finally ended more than 50 years ago through a series of legislative actions and Supreme Court decisions. Slavery and Jim Crowism were the acts of long-dead ancestors of almost anyone living today. The presumption that all whites should assume guilt for some kind original sin against blacks is sheer nonsense, and one many of us will simply never accept.

Nevertheless, the legacy of degraded personhood under those long-defunct laws created a heavy burden for blacks in terms of upward mobility, and certainly vestiges of racism survive even today. However, we have adopted many standards and programs intended to rectify this unfortunate legacy, including the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and beyond, the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson, and many other enlargements of the social safety net since then. These programs have represented a massive redistribution of resources to the impoverished via education, housing, and direct transfers. One estimate put cumulative federal spending on anti-poverty programs alone at $13 trillion between 1963 and 2010. In addition, a variety of programs have been a source of preferential treatment for various minorities in an effort to ensure equal opportunities across many aspects of life.

The success of these programs is subject to great doubt (more on that below), and in fact the motives of Johnson and other proponents of this expansion in the role of government were perhaps less than pure. Nevertheless, the entirety of the package of civil rights and welfare state programs over the years was supported by most of the black community. In fact, one could say that these measures were hardly the actions of a racist society, at least in ostensible intent.

And yet we are told today that we do not sufficiently appreciate that black lives matter! There is no question that racism lives in the hearts and minds of certain individuals, but those individuals aren’t all white. More importantly, the blanket condemnation of whites as racist lacks any basis in reality.

When Black Lives Matter activists talk of “systemic racism”, you can translate as follows: blacks have not met with the ex post economic and social success to which these activists believe blacks are entitled. As it pertains to law enforcement, they mean that blacks are met with more violent police actions than blacks should suffer.

As to law enforcement, it is an awful thing that crime perpetrated by blacks, and particularly crime by blacks against blacks, is disproportionally heavy. As I argued recently, it is difficult to accept the hypothesis of systemic racism in law enforcement in the presence of rampant “systemic crime” in the black community. But crime, in turn, is tied closely to economic success, or the lack thereof.

Median black income has grown relative to median white income since 1970 (also see here). Unfortunately, many blacks have not shared in that growth and remain mired in poverty and on public aid. Sadly, many aid programs have pernicious effects because they impose extremely high marginal tax rates on earned income. The solution lays the groundwork for continued dependency. That qualifies as systemic racism, or at least classism.

Two well-known black economists, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, have both decried the welfare state’s destructive impact on the black family unit. That’s one reason why Williams calls white liberals the “worst enemy of black people“. (Also see what Williams has to say about expectations for black students, and about black crime.)

Ultimately, the uproar over racism alleged to be so widespread and “systemic” is divisive. It is an application of Marxist “conflict theory” lying at the very heart of identity politics. Such tribal philosophies creat huge obstacles to peaceful and productive coexistence among diverse peoples. Meanwhile, there’s a simple truth: a widespread consensus exists that all lives are of equal value, that all lives deserve respect and equal treatment under the law, that the goodwill of one’s fellows is a birthright, and that racism is fundamentally evil. If society is to provide fertile ground for the equal cultivation of all lives, it must reject the strictures and resentment bred by identity politics in favor of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and compassion for those unable to care for themselves.

Diversity of Thought Matters

14 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by in Censorship, Identity Politics, Tyranny

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Here’s an extraordinary letter written last week by a UC-Berkeley history professor to his colleagues. I link to a reprint on ZeroHedge because it was easier to read on my phone than the original source. The letter is anonymous, but it’s authenticity has been verified by well-known colleagues of the author outside the UC system, including Thomas Sowell of Stanford. In the first instance, it is a reaction to recent departmental and university communications, but the issues are much broader. The author, a self-described person of color, is embittered by the tyranny of groupthink that has characterized the reaction to George Floyd’s murder, the “soft bigotry of low expectations’ for blacks, and the virtual beatification of a man with a long and brutal rap sheet. The letter is an ominous warning that basic freedoms are at risk, not to mention intellectual integrity. Here are some salient points from the letter:

  • “I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions.“
  • “The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence.“
  • “… consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black. … Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries.
  • “I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even though I believe in and can justify every word I type.“
  • “The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. … No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence.“
  • “… our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly. To explain what I mean, consider what happens if you choose to donate to Black Lives Matter, an organization UCB History has explicitly promoted in its recent mailers. All donations to the official BLM website are immediately redirected to ActBlue Charities, an organization primarily concerned with bankrolling election campaigns for Democrat candidates. Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.“
  • … our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach. He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing, failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his honest and hard-working neighbors. … And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women. With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species.”
  • “My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. … The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.“

There is much more in the letter. Some will dismiss the letter based on the author’s decision to remain anonymous, but one can hardly find fault with that in today’s suffocating intellectual environment. There are many others who remain silent because they either fear the consequences, distain the questions, or wish to be polite. My only other reservation about the letter is the author’s failure to acknowledge George Floyd’s efforts to reform, which were obviously in vain. Those efforts and his murder should not elevate Floyd to an heroic status. Nevertheless, his victimhood qualifies him as a legitimate symbol of police brutality, if not racism.

While much of academia has been swallowed whole by vapid identitarianism and scientism over science and rational thought, the history professor has managed to survive in what might be the hottest bed of leftist extremism in the country at UC-Berkeley. I hope the professor has a long and influential career.

Single-Provider Education, Ideology, and Lunch

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Education, School Choice

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Advocates of public education sometimes can’t help themselves from demanding that parents abandon their own informed judgments and principles for the good of the collective. A friend sent me the links below along with his misgivings about the motives at play. These are his words:

“Here are two examples of something that drives me crazy and amounts to little more than treating my child (and me) as a [resource] to be spent for the improvement of others. The first calls for parents who pack lunches (because they are healthier and cheaper than school lunches) to stop packing and use the school hot lunch so the added scale of moths could improve foods for everybody.

The second is the same, but about attending public school instead of private – again, so that the parental force added to the public schools will help improve public schools. Never mind if public schools are actually good for you.” 

The links are from the New York Times and Slate, respectively:

Why Are You Still Packing Lunch for Your Kids?

If You Send Your Kid To Private School, You Are a Bad Person

In terms of the simple economics, I’d boil these motives down to two things: a desire to achieve scale economies, which is forgivable as far as it goes; and a desire to strengthen the public education monopoly. Of course the latter brings perks for all those who participate in the management and operation of public schools, which have absorbed an ever-increasing volume of resources with little or no improvement in academic results. But the motives involve politics as well as economics. The apparent mission of the public school monopoly encompasses more than the mere provision of education. As I have discussed in more detail in an earlier post, it fosters the inculcation of collectivist values in our children. Public schools, and a few private schools catering to wealthy progressives who would say public schools are good for your kids, are hotbeds of social justice doctrine and identity politics.

Here are my friend’s closing thoughts:

“I’ve always been resistant to private school because we already pay for public [schools] and public [schools] are good enough. But lately I’ve been thinking about private school, in large part to keep [my son] away from these sorts of folks who want to use him for their own purposes…”

Those purposes can be kept in check only through school competition and parental choice. Like any creditable provider of services, schools should cater to their customers, not the other way around.

 

 

The Leninists Among Us

29 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Leftism, Marxism, Tyranny

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I suggested recently that the pursuit of zero-sum gains, and zero-sum thinking generally, is a form of social rot. How timely that Gary Saul Morson has offered this interesting essay on “Leninthink” in the October issue of The New Criterion. It validates my conviction that a zero-sum view of the world invites social brutalism and economic cannibalism. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was of course the first premier of the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. His philosophy was a practical derivative of Marxism, a real-world implementation of a “dictatorship of the proletariat“. Morson describes Lenin’s view of social relations thusly:

“Lenin regarded all interactions as zero-sum.To use the phrase he made famous, the fundamental question is always ‘Who Whom?’—who dominates whom, who does what to whom, ultimately who annihilates whom. To the extent that we gain, you lose. Contrast this view with the one taught in basic microeconomics: whenever there is a non-forced transaction, both sides benefit, or they would not make the exchange. For the seller, the money is worth more than the goods he sells, and for the buyer the goods are worth more than the money. Lenin’s hatred of the market, and his attempts to abolish it entirely during War Communism, derived from the opposite idea, that all buying and selling is necessarily exploitative. When Lenin speaks of ‘profiteering’ or ‘speculation’ (capital crimes), he is referring to every transaction, however small. Peasant ‘bagmen’ selling produce were shot.

Basic books on negotiation teach that you can often do better than split the difference, since people have different concerns. Both sides can come out ahead—but not for the Soviets, whose negotiating stance John F. Kennedy once paraphrased as: what’s mine is mine; and what’s yours is negotiable. For us, the word ‘politics’ means a process of give and take, but for Lenin it’s we take, and you give. From this it follows that one must take maximum advantage of one’s position. If the enemy is weak enough to be destroyed, and one stops simply at one’s initial demands, one is objectively helping the enemy, which makes one a traitor. Of course, one might simply be insane. Long before Brezhnev began incarcerating dissidents in madhouses, Lenin was so appalled that his foreign minister, Boris Chicherin, recommended an unnecessary concession to American loan negotiators, that he pronounced him mad—not metaphorically—and demanded he be forcibly committed. ‘We will be fools if we do not immediately and forcibly send him to a sanatorium.'”

The ruthlessness of Lenin’s mindset was manifested in his unwillingness to engage in rationalizations or even civil debate:

“Lenin’s language, no less than his ethics, served as a model, taught in Soviet schools and recommended in books with titles like Lenin’s Language and On Lenin’s Polemical Art. In Lenin’s view, a true revolutionary did not establish the correctness of his beliefs by appealing to evidence or logic, as if there were some standards of truthfulness above social classes. Rather, one engaged in ‘blackening an opponent’s mug so well it takes him ages to get it clean again.’ Nikolay Valentinov, a Bolshevik who knew Lenin well before becoming disillusioned, reports him saying: ‘There is only one answer to revisionism: smash its face in!’

When Mensheviks objected to Lenin’s personal attacks, he replied frankly that his purpose was not to convince but to destroy his opponent. In work after work, Lenin does not offer arguments refuting other Social Democrats but brands them as ‘renegades’ from Marxism. Marxists who disagreed with his naïve epistemology were ‘philosophic scum.’ Object to his brutality and your arguments are ‘moralizing vomit.’ You can see traces of this approach in the advice of Saul Alinsky—who cites Lenin—to ‘pick the target, freeze it, personalize it.'”

This offers a useful perspective on why it’s so difficult to have civil discussions with leftists today. They have inherited versions of Lenin’s polemic style. You’re more likely to be verbally attacked by the Left than to be engaged in a productive exchange of ideas, as I’m constantly reminded by observing the behavior of SJWs on social media. Leftist retribution is swift. Glenn Reynolds has mused, “As the old saying has it, the left looks for heretics and the right looks for converts, and both find what they’re looking for.” That might be too optimistic!

The richest source of zero-sum gains is through the levers of government, which possesses the necessary coercive power to achieve that aim. When coercive power is so ruthlessly exercised, the appearance of loyalty to those in power becomes paramount for survival. This can make it necessary to display an outward acceptance of fanciful claims:

“Lenin’s idea that coercion is not a last resort but the first principle of Party action. Changing human nature, producing boundless prosperity, overcoming death itself: all these miracles could be achieved because the Party was the first organization ever to pursue coercion without limits. In one treatise Stalin corrects the widespread notion that the laws of nature are not binding on Bolsheviks, and it is not hard to see how this kind of thinking took root. And, given an essentially mystical faith in coercion, it is not hard to see how imaginative forms of torture became routine in Soviet justice.

Dmitri Volkogonov, the first biographer with access to the secret Lenin archives, concluded that for Lenin violence was a goal in itself. He quotes Lenin in 1908 recommending ‘real, nationwide terror, which invigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.'”

Morson provides this revealing quote from the madman Lenin himself:

“The kulak uprising in [your] 5 districts must be crushed without pity. . . . 1) Hang (and I mean hang so that the people can see) not less than 100 known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. 2) Publish their names. 3) Take all their grain away from them. 4) Identify hostages . . . . Do this so that for hundreds of miles around the people can see, tremble, know and cry . . . . Yours, Lenin. P. S. Find tougher people.”

At least today the Lefties try to dox people first, rather than #2. The hanging might have to come later.

There is a real danger in encouraging such zero-sum notions as redistribution and class warfare. Even today’s preoccupation with identity politics is one of zero-sum emphasis. Furthermore, the concepts of mass victimization and social justice promote a delusion of righteousness, a necessary precondition to the kind of monstrous acts of a Lenin. Anyone truly interested in promoting an atmosphere of social cooperation should recognize the echos of Leninism we see today from Leftists on social media and in the streets. These tyrants must be resisted before we’re all on the wrong side of the ultimate zero sum outcome.

“Othered” By the Left

31 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in fascism, Identity Politics, Progressivism

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Progressivism certainly has its discards. The photo showed a trash bin labeled “CATHOLIC DUMPSTER”. Dead bodies were hanging out of the top. A “friend” had posted it on Facebook, ostensibly as humor. I thought it was in poor taste and had the temerity to say so in a comment; naturally I was immediately castigated by a mob for expressing that opinion. The “friend” said that if I really knew him, I’d realize that he loves everyone. That claim was quickly undermined by his partner, who joined the exchange to spew vitriol for Christians. A wiser person on the thread, perhaps detecting a whiff of hypocrisy, noted the likely outrage had the label on the trash bin said “JEWISH DUMPSTER”. Well yes…. Er, maybe. The political Left, it seems, is drifting ever closer to anti-Semitism as well as radical intolerance for Christians. This in addition to outright hostility toward whites, men, or anyone perceived as having “privilege”. The rhetoric is becoming increasingly hateful, vile, and violent.

A recent confrontation in front of the Lincoln Memorial wrapped together several objects of leftist hatred. It involved boys from Covington Catholic High School and left-wing activist Nathan Phillips, an Omaha Indian, as well as a group of black nationalists called the Black Hebrew Israelites. The Covington boys are white, male, Catholic, pro-life, and they wore MAGA caps. They were passive except for chants intended to drown-out shouts of “faggots” from the Black Israelites, but the media almost uniformly portrayed the boys as racist villains in the immediate aftermath, based on incomplete video evidence. It is difficult to ascertain who released the original video, but a longer version proved that the boys were not at fault. Meanwhile, Phillips proved to be a bald-faced liar. He lied about the sequence of events, the behavior of the boys, and about having served in Vietnam. But those lies fueled a media narrative as well as the fertile imaginations of many leftists. The full video reveals that Phillips marched from some distance straight up to one of the teenagers and proceeded to bang a drum in the kid’s face. The boy maintained his composure and kept a calm smile on his face. Later, however, that smile was cited as proof of racism!

A few members of the media retracted the awful things they said about the teenagers and the incident, but others continue to allege that the Covington teenagers were at fault, or that they at least share the blame. Some of the rhetoric is no less hateful than before the full video became available. This is a far cry from the heartfelt entreaties to avoid criticism of any controversial opinions expressed by “the children” in the wake of the Parkland High School shooting. In the present case. the kids have been targeted with a slew of insults and threats to themselves and their families.

Regarding the MAGA caps, I am by no means a Trump enthusiast, but I root for him to do well as our president despite my strong disapproval of some of his policies. You won’t ever catch me in a MAGA cap. However, I do not believe that he and his political base are racist. Trump is an equal opportunity denigrator, but he’s called a racist every time his target happens to be a person of color, as though people of color are always above criticism. Trump is called a racist for his promise to build a wall along the Mexican border to stem illegal crossings, though the same proposal has been offered by many Democrats over the years, including Barack Obama and Check Schumer. Therefore, the very idea that wearing a MAGA cap is a racist signal is transparently political and absurd. That some of the Covington boys wore MAGA caps has reinforced other excuses to target them for vicious criticism.

A further issue is that the Covington boys are privileged, you see, guilty of possessing white, male privilege, even as they defended a black classmate harangued by the Black Israelites. They attend a private school, and so they must be from wealthy families and worthy of progressive hatred. They were in DC for the March for Life, so they are opposed to reproductive choice and must hate women. In fact, it’s been alleged that they were in DC only to oppose the Women’s March. Misogynists!

Hatred for Catholics and for anyone who has attended private schools is always de rigueur on the Left. That was quite clear during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Hatred gushed from the Left not only because they were satisfied of Judge Kavanaugh’s guilt based on unsubstantiated, 11th-hour allegations leveled against him by an SJW, but apparently also because he attended a Catholic boys school! Oh, and he is male. I have another “friend” whose Facebook feed was littered with smears of Kavanaugh, including characterizations of private school kids as “smug little weasels”. As Caroline Lewis said at the time, these “critics” are barbarians. Do you think they don’t want to hurt those they’ve “othered”, or want someone else to hurt them in one way or another? The boundaries of grievance always expand, and will keep expanding until they eat their own.

David French claims that his defense of Christian education prompted an activist to start the #ExposeChristianSchools hashtag. Now, I’m sure everyone who has attended public or private schools can repeat a litany of stories about a few awful teachers they were forced to endure, not to mention the hostile environment that school children often create for one another. But private schools, and religious schools, are often superior options for parents and children. If you don’t like the curriculum, don’t send your kids there. If you don’t think the policies are sufficiently inclusive, or the environment will be unhealthy for your child, then send them elsewhere. But the vilification of an entire segment of the population based on how they choose to educate their children is despicable. They’d ban Christian education if they could… and religion!

Note that the Left’s insistence on state domination is itself a threat of violence. While capitalism and free markets are cooperative in nature, socialism is at its core authoritarian and coercive. If you resist you become an enemy of “the people”, and such enemies will have consequences to pay.

Antifa is unashamedly violent, but it might be only the tip of the iceberg. The rhetoric of the Left has become increasingly hostile toward Christians, Jews, males, whites, Republicans, and of course anyone achieving material success. There is no forgiveness nor genuine love of others in leftist doctrine. Indeed, the “otherism” inherent in leftist identity politics is dangerous and a source of increasing social instability. Their “eliminationist rhetoric” is becoming all too common (scroll down at the link).

For now I’ll continue to engage in the marketplace of ideas. Perhaps it’s becoming a war. Us “others” need to keep voting and never back down. And by all means, be prepared to defend ourselves and our loved ones by any means necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

Handy Q+A: Policing For Whiffs of Racism/Sexism

25 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in Identity Politics

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Too many folks today are disquieted by the possibility of uttering some erstwhile harmless expression that might conceivably offend peoples of various identity groups. As a service to my readers, I have decided to share a link to this thoughtful guide, actually a quiz, from the Manhattan Contrarian: “How To Identify Racist And Sexist Remarks And Slurs“. It is a short field guide, as it were, but one that may be applied to the “field of the mind” to fend off impurities of thought. In this day and age, one can’t be too careful!

Those who wish to score themselves on the quiz without exposure to spoilers should proceed directly to the link. I hope others, after reading just two of the questions and answers I quote below, will be so moved by the spirit of the exercise that they will go to the link to read the quiz in its entirety. Here are two of the questions and answers:

Q: “You say, ‘I believe the most qualified person should get the job.'”

A: “Obviously, this is racist, and probably sexist as well. … This statement demonstrates the ‘myth of meritocracy‘ and ‘assert[s] that race does not play a role in life successes.‘ It conveys the ‘message‘ that ‘[p]eople of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.‘”

Q: “I don’t give a, I don’t give a, I don’t give a fuck. I’m willin’ to die for this shit.  I done cried for this shit, might take a life for this shit. Put the Bible down and go eye to eye for this shit … If I gotta slap a pussy-ass nigga, I’ma make it look sexy.”

A: “Racist? Are you kidding????? These are lyrics from the song “Element,” from the album DAMN, by Kendrick Lamar, that won the Pulitzer Prize for music back in March. Obviously, if you had written this first, you would have won the Pulitzer Prize instead of Lamar.”

You must be attuned to the logic and politics of identity. Do NOT stumble into any implication that a thing matters that could be associated with an identity group, no matter how coincidentally. And do NOT under any circumstances attempt to adopt an element of the culture of another identity group, be it food, dress, music, or language. At the same time, however, do NOT forget that nothing matters more than honoring and paying restitution to each and every identity group that might have a claim to victimhood. Except for Jews, especially Zionists. Hope you like your straightjacket extra-tight.

Corporate Lapdogs of the Left

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Central Planning, Identity Politics, Progressivism, rent seeking

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Now don’t get me wrong, I definitely prefer to see private goods and services produced privately, not publicly. Private ownership of the means of production makes the world a better place because ownership and self-interest drive performance and value, to put it all too briefly. But corporate America is now so thoroughly encumbered by ideological distractions that it compromises the mission of creating value, risking shareholder returns and invested capital as well. Having spent the past 31 years employed successively by three gigantic corporate hairballs (with a 2-year stint at the central bank), the following thesis about corporate CEOs, and corporate America by extension, strikes me as wholly accurate:

“CEOs … mostly [reject] the ethos of rugged individualism in favor of a more collectivist view of the world. The capitalists [are] not much interested in defending the culture of capitalism. … the psychological and operational mechanics of large corporations [are] much like those of other large organizations, including government agencies … American CEOs [believe] that expertise deployed through bureaucracy [can] impose rationality on such unruly social entities as free markets, culture, family, and sexuality. The supplanting of spontaneous order with political discipline is the essence of progressivism….“

I changed the tenses used above by Kevin Williamson, who attempts to explain why American corporations became such progressive activists. The beginning of the quote describes interviews conducted by William H. Whyte in the 1950s, but it’s as true now as it was then, and probably much more so. The technocratic view of organizational efficacy may be true up to a point. In fact, there is undoubtedly an optimal size for any organization that is dependent upon it’s mission, the technologies at its disposal, and the range of prices it is likely to face in input and output markets. It’s all too easy for a successful firm to expand beyond that point, however, as many now-defunct businesses have learned the hard way. However, the quote merely highlights the sympathetic view often held by corporate managements toward the notion of a planned society, guided by a class of technocrats. They share this scientistic line of thinking with the statist left, though the corporatist vision is a world in which their private organizations play a critical role, with risks mitigated by “partners” in government.

Private incentives can produce wonderful results, but they are corrupted by the scent of private advantage that can be gained via government intervention in markets. The corporate practice of seeking rents through legislative and administrative action has been going on since at least the 1880s, when railroads sought protection from competition and other shipping interests via federal regulatory action.The symbiosis between government and corporate interests, or corporatism, has been growing ever since. Whether it is lucrative contract awards, subsidies, or favorable regulation, government has lots of goodies at its disposal by virtue of its exclusive ability to exert coercive power. This quote of David Cay Johnston describes the end-product of corporate rent-seeking behavior:

“Corporate socialism is where we socialize losses and privatize gains. Companies that have failed in the marketplace stick the taxpayers with their losses, but when they make money they get to keep it, and secondly, huge amounts of capital are given to companies by taxpayers.”

Risk mitigation is at the heart of a second variety of corporate leftism, and Williamson notes the asymmetry in the political risks faced by most corporations:

“Conservatives may roll their eyes a little bit at promises to build windmills so efficient that we’ll cease needing coal and oil, but progressives (at least a fair portion of them) believe that using fossil fuels may very well end human civilization. The nation’s F-150 drivers are not going to organize a march on Chevron’s headquarters if it puts a billion bucks into biofuels, but the nation’s Subaru drivers might very well do so if it doesn’t. … The same asymmetry characterizes the so-called social issues.“

At this point, Williamson goes on to describe a few social issues on which corporate leaders are frequently harangued by the left. Those leaders may view conservative positions on those issues as aberrant, according to Williamson, because the leaders inhabit an insulated world of elitist, media-driven, politically-correct opinion. They wish to be seen as “progressive” and discount the risk of offending conservatives. While I do not take Williamson’s side on all of the social issues he mentions, I concede that there is some truth to the asymmetry he describes.

An avenue through which corporate America is strongly influenced by the left is identity politics. This is partly an unfortunate side-effect of civil rights legislation and other anti-discrimination law, but in today’s litigious environment, there are excessive legal risks against which corporations must take precautions. This is embedded in human resource policies to the point at which hiring the best individual to fill a role is subject to a series of costly, time-consuming hurdles, and is sometimes impossible. Then, there are the mandatory “Diversity and Inclusion” courses that all employees are required to complete. These overbearing attempts to “educate” the work force consume valuable staff time and are of questionable value in light of the aggravation and resentment they inspire in employees. Finally, I can’t keep count of all the corporate-sponsored activities devoted to celebrating one identity group after another. Can we please get back to work?

Today, as a consumer, it is becoming more difficult to engage in commerce without exposure to a seller’s political positioning. For example, I buy about 90% of my clothing from a particular clothier, but last weekend I learned that the company had taken an objectionable position (to me) in the debate over gun legislation. I am certain that activists badgered the company, and it succumbed, and so I will change my shopping habits. People often find that it’s easier to engage in arms-length transactions when the other party stays off the soapbox. But it goes further than that. Here is Williamson:

“Whereas the ancient corporate practice was to decline to take a public position on anything not related to their businesses, contemporary CEOs feel obliged to act as public intellectuals as well as business managers.“

Well, “ancient” might take it a bit too far, but as a customer, employee, and especially as a shareholder, I would urge any company to steer clear of political posturing. Do not dilute your mission of delivering value to customers, which dovetails with serving the interests of shareholders. You must pursue that mission in a way that you consider responsible and ethical, which just might narrow the scope of the mission. And that’s okay. Just be as neutral as possible on extraneous issues as you reach out to potential customers, and do not respond to politically-motivated threats except in the most diplomatic terms.

Should I bother to say that corporations should eschew public subsidies? That they should respond to competition by improving value, rather than lobbying for advantages and protection from lawmakers or regulators? That they should not badger their employees to give to their company’s Political Action Committee (PAC)?

I must be fantasizing! Corporations would never follow that advice, not as long as they can capture rents through the seductive expedient of big government. If that were the only reason for the hate reserved by leftists for corporate America, I’d be right with them. But in fact, leftist rhetoric condemns the profit motive generally, both in principle and as a method of scapegoating for any social ill. Williamson marvels at the incredible irony of the corporate enterprise-cum-lapdog of the Left, which is especially palpable as the Left beats the dog so unrelentingly.

Jordan Peterson Is Not Complacent

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Identity Politics, Individualism

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It’s a hoot to watch Jordan Peterson‘s videos — he stands before crowds doing … crisply-articulated philosophy, seemingly on the fly. He is an outspoken psychologist at the University of Toronto who covers a lot of intellectual ground with an impactful delivery. One of Peterson’s primary messages is so simple as to seem trite: take control of yourself, because you can and you should for your own sake and those around you! But his treatment is an empowering tonic for both men and women, and many are listening. He has toiled away as a professional psychologist, a professor, an author and a philosopher for many years; his ascent to notoriety has been recent and fairly meteoric. Luminaries like Tyler Cowen and Noah Smith now call Peterson one of the top public intellectuals in the western world.

However, Peterson takes positions that are seemingly hard for the Left to swallow: he believes in the power of individual action; that freedom of expression is the basis of personal and academic freedom; that identity politics is destructive (whether on the Right or the Left); and that white privilege is a lie.

Predictably, the Left has attacked Peterson and attempted to characterize him as a spokesman for the far-right. He meets challenges of this kind with a kind of charged equanimity, exposing falsehoods with quick-footed logic, empirics, and honest reflection. Dan Sanchez has written a nice summary of the attacks on Peterson and shows them to be wholly without foundation. He has critics in both ends of the political spectrum, as Sanchez observes:

“[Far right] critics don’t understand what Peterson is saying, because they are mired in the mindsets of politics and war. The way of politics and war is to confront an enemy horde by amassing your own horde: whether it be on the battlefield, in street demonstrations, or in voting booths. It is to fight tribal barbarism by tending toward the tribal and the barbaric yourself. But the way of the heroic, civilized individual is to lead by example and to lead by appealing to the interests of those whose behavior you want to influence.”

And in Peterson’s own words, quoted by Sanchez, tribal barbarism is the way to social ruin:

“…where we’re making your group identity the most important thing about you. I think that’s reprehensible. I think it’s devastating. I think it’s genocidal in its ultimate expression. I think it will bring down our civilization if we pursue it. We shouldn’t be playing that game.“

On those assertions, Sanchez notes the following:

“… Peterson’s claim that identity politics is ‘genocidal in its ultimate expression’ is no exaggeration. Hitler’s military invasions and death camps were the ultimate expression of the racialist and nationalist identity politics that spiritually drove Nazism. And Stalin’s weaponized famines and ‘gulag archipelago’ were the ultimate expression of the class warfare identity politics that spiritually drove Soviet communism.”

So Peterson clearly condemns groupthink on both the Left and Right. He celebrates the value of people as individuals, and he urges us all to realize our value through individual responsibility and productive effort. Help yourself, help those you love, and help others. That’s a call to real human action, as distinct from the seeking of rents through the political process. Peterson is both a fascinating personality and thinker. His ideas and passion can be a powerful antidote to the complacency that plagues so many today. I hope he continues to gain prominence.

National Endowment for Rich Farts

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Big Government, Charity, Subsidies

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Wailing has begun over the possible defunding and demise of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). How could those cretins propose to eliminate an institution so very critical to promoting artistic expression? If that’s your reaction, you haven’t thought much about the main beneficiaries of federal sinkholes like the NEA. Granted, at $146 million annually, it is not a major federal budget item, but I’d rather not stoop to defend a lousy program because it’s small. So what’s my beef with the NEA, you ask? Read on.

First, any implication that the NEA is the lifeblood of the arts is laughable. No, the arts won’t die if federal funding is denied. Jeff Jacoby quotes figures suggesting that grants from the NEA represented less than 1% of all support for the arts and culture in the U.S. in 2015. Great art was created prior to the establishment of the NEA in 1965. Without the NEA, such bungles as “Piss Christ” would have met with less acclaim. As such a minor funding vehicle, eliminating the NEA won’t make much difference to artists, but it will end a subsidy for wealthy patrons, who can and do provide support for worthy projects, but also derive essentially private benefits from the federal arts spigot.

A large share of NEA grant money goes to non-profit organizations that are already subsidized to the extent that they are not taxed. (Let’s face it: the term “non-profit” itself is often a term of art.) Large arts organizations, which receive a significant share of NEA grants, often have highly-paid administrators and sumptuous facilities. Contributions to those organizations are tax-deductible for the donors. And few of those organizations provide art to the public for free or at a discount. Indeed, as noted at the last link, they often charge significant prices for attendance, and their audiences include a disproportionate percentage of high-income patrons.

Lawrence Reed argues persuasively that government need not subsidize the arts in an article in his series on the Cliches of Progressivism. Here are the highlights:

  • “Government funding of the arts… carries with it all the downsides of dependence on politics.
  • Claims that arts spending is magically “multiplied” are specious and usually self-serving, and never look at alternative uses of the same money.
  • Culture arises naturally and spontaneously among people who chose to interact with each other. Art is part of that, but it also competes with all sorts of other things people choose to do with their time and money.
  • If art is truly important, then the last thing we should want to do is politicize it or divert it toward those things that people with power think we should see or hear.”

Reed’s comment regarding “multipliers” might need some explanation in this context. The NEA’s defenders often claim that each dollar of NEA grant money results in multiple additional grants from other sources, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this claim except for a requirement that NEA grants be matched at the state level (not to mention a requirement for a state-level arts agency). Obviously, that represents another cost to taxpayers. It is quite possible, in fact, that the NEA and matching state grants act as substitutes for, and depress, private arts giving. See this piece in Forbes for more background. This NBER research utilized a large panel data set on individual charities and found only mixed support for the proposition that government grants encourage private contributions. In fact, the estimated effect was ambiguous for individual categories of charitable giving (which did not explicitly address the arts as a category). In any case, a positive cross-sectional effect of government grants on private giving for individual charities is consistent with a negative effect on other charities that do not receive public grants.

In a 20-year-old report from the Heritage Foundation, Stuart Butler offered a list of reasons to defund the NEA, which have held up well. Here, I provide eight that seem relevant:

  1. The arts will have more than enough support without the NEA: See above.
  2. Welfare for cultural elitists: See above. NEA grants fund a number of big and very elite organizations, but they would have you believe that it’s a veritable welfare program for the arts. That is a huge distortion. There is no question that the distribution of patrons of these organizations skews to the wealthy.
  3. Discourages charitable gifts to the arts: See above. Is the award of an NEA grant the equivalent of establishing a credit record to an arts organization? This might hold up for a few small organizations with projects the NEA has funded, but again, the support for this proposition is anecdotal and self-serving, and the numbers are small. And is there an implied stain on the legitimacy of any organization unable to win such a grant?
  4. Lowers the quality of American art: Committee decisions and central planning are not conducive to the spirit of creativity. Public institutions are often guided by political agendas, and government-sanctioned art stands in sharp contradiction to the ideal of free expression. Butler quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature…. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
  5. Funds pornography: this is not my hot button… it’s an issue only to the extent that public funds should not be used for purposes only flimsily in the public interest that many taxpayers find morally repugnant.
  6. Promotes politically correct art: See #4 above. The merits are then judged on the basis of criteria like race, ethnicity, and gender identity, not the quality of the art itself.
  7. Wastes resources: Butler offers a few examples of the waste at the NEA, a shortcoming common to all bureaucracies. The NEA funds organizations that behave as non-profit cronyists, engaging in lobbying efforts for more support. Butler also cites evidence that recipients of government grants in the UK hire more administrative staff than non-recipients, and tend not to reduce ticket prices.
  8. Funding the NEA disturbs the U.S. tradition of limited government: I suppose this goes without saying….

The federal government in the U.S. was granted a set of enumerated powers in the Constitution, and promoting the arts was not one of them. It wasn’t as if the subject didn’t come up at the Constitutional Convention. It did, and it was voted down. Today, entrenched interests at organizations like the NEA and National Public Radio distort the character of the constituencies they serve. In reality, those constituencies  are heavily concentrated among the cultural and economic elite. The NEA and NPR also promote the fiction that they are all that stand between access to the arts and culture and a bleak, artless dystopia. Give them credit for creating a fantasy about which the political left readily suspends disbelief.