Relevant Clips from Things I'm Watching This Week

All just causes must respect the rule of law. That is a central principle of our liberal order, and it must be upheld at all costs!

What Is Love? (Reprint)

From 2015:

This post is going to be a hodgepodge. I'm trying to pull in some disparate threads I've picked up in the past week, so forgive me for thinking out loud.

First thread: I'm not only a secular teacher with special interests in STEM education and test preparation. I'm also a volunteer catechist at my local Catholic church, where I - hopefully successfully - instruct young teens and confirmandi in the fundamentals of our Faith. Last Sunday, the topic was Jesus Christ: who is He, and how can we develop a closer relationship with Him? The first segment in the curriculum encouraged the kids to share what they imagined when they thought of Jesus, and this is pretty much the response I received:

The stiff-necked contrarian in me was deeply unsatisfied. Certainly, Jesus is merciful, forgiving, and approachable for children and sinners alike. But I couldn't help thinking of that Facebook meme. You know -- the one that references Matthew 21:12?

And what about C.S. Lewis' descriptions of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia?

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

***** 

“He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

So I pulled out the Bible and tried to steer my charges in a slightly different direction. I reminded them that Jesus' forgiveness was always followed by a command to sin no more. I noted the ways in which Jesus called out the powers of his day -- and was ultimately put to death for it. And overall, I tried to paint a more virile picture of who Jesus was.

Driving home, though, I was still disturbed. Damn it: Our culture has domesticated Christ.

Second thread: Apparently, according to the scrupulously "correct," we can no longer call criminals what they are. The word "criminal," you see, "dehumanizes" people who've simply been "rendered desperate by the cruelties of capitalism."

That sound you just heard was my eyes rolling out of my skull and bouncing on the floor. I'll be typing this post by feel from now on.

But seriously: Why are we suddenly so concerned about the precious feelings of petty thieves and thugs -- and why are we so unconcerned about the feelings of their victims? I'm a Christian and do believe in the possibility of redemption even for the very worst malefactors, but as Sarah Hoyt has noted, crime victims are also human beings and also deserve our consideration:

Say, for instance, you feel sorry for a pedophile – not that any of them got involved in anything like that recently! – because after all the poor critter is confused, and didn’t choose to be this way. You let him/her go, or even encourage him/her with stuff like “it’s not your fault.”

What is going to happen? I can tell you. What is going to happen is that they’re going to hurt another or many kids.

Now the kids didn’t ask to be hurt, and they didn’t do anything to deserve it.

By encouraging/feeling sorry for one person, who can, after all, control him/herself or seek help in doing such, you were cruel to a vast number of innocents that didn’t do anything to bring this on them.

This reality should be self-evident to anyone -- particularly to people who've been preyed upon. So why this drive to discourage telling the damned truth?

Third thread: Go and read the following post, also by Sarah Hoyt:

Holding Women Back

Sarah wrote this in response to the silly claims zipping around fandom that we Sad Puppies are seeking to suppress women writers, but one passage in particular struck me as more generally applicable:

Making special prizes for good little girls because vagina and actually going so far as to argue that creations like games or books which are engaged in as ludic pursuits don’t need to be fun, but only relevant, and that you should enjoy them even if you don’t enjoy them because they’re created by women, does the reverse of what I (and a lot of others, I was not a paragon.  I’m using my experience because I lived it) did when I had the best grades and won contests DESPITE the inherent prejudice against me.  I and others like me proved women can be grown ups and can function in the adult world; these victimhood pony-riders are convincing people who by an large believe in female equality to reconsider and think that women are fragile, not so smart creatures who need easy steps and easier tests and accommodations to function.

Here, Sarah is approaching, asymptotically, what we who know a little something about education and human psychology have discovered: We are not designed to live in a friction-free universe. We require some adversity to become fully-actualized.

I'm not suggesting, of course, that we deliberately and needlessly hurt people to "toughen them up." I am suggesting, however, that I would be a failure as a teacher if I did not set the bar just a little bit higher than my students' grasp and then inspire them to jump. That's why I love Hajimete no Otsukai -- or this video, also from Japan:


High expectations beget excellence. Criticism begets improvement. What would happen to my students if I never deconstructed the weaknesses in their persuasive essays? What if I never pointed out their grammatical mistakes -- or told them their math was wrong? What if I never imposed discipline? I would inflict illiterate, innumerate brats upon the world.

This new regime of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and trophies for victimhood flies against our very nature, and it is already making lousy writers and lousy thinkers. As a writer, you must be able to accurately and sympathetically depict a full range of human personalities -- but you will not learn how to do so if you spend your entire lives avoiding people who think differently. As a supposed activist for "justice," you must understand, deeply, the potential obstacles that stand in your way, and you must know how to respond to the people who might oppose you -- skills you will not learn if your college campus is cleansed of all that is potentially disturbing to your beliefs. I know I'm a better debater because my father consistently served as my devil's advocate. Why are millennial SJW's and their older enablers so eager to deny their compatriots the same intellectual experience? A critique is not an assault. Challenge is not violence. When you assert the opposite, you foster mediocrity. You make the objects of your supposed "compassion" look somehow inferior.

Now let's try to create the tapestry: The common theme that breathes through all of this, I think, is our society's disordered definition of love. As a catechist, I repeatedly emphasize that love is wanting what is best for another person and seeking, self-sacrificially, to accomplish it. Our popular culture, however, has tamed this concept the same way it has tamed the radical, masculine Christ. Love, alas, is now simply niceness. If you love someone, says the zeitgeist, you must never cause him or her to feel shame, sorrow, frustration, or even cognitive dissonance. To elevate a man, you must wrap him in swaddling wool.

Said zeitgeist is wrong - morally and scientifically - and it should be challenged at every opportunity.

Link Dump!

UC Berkeley History Professor's Open Letter Against BLM

Read the epic smack-down that took the internet by storm! Many, many excellent points are made here that deserve to be discussed.

Ban All Culture!

If you want some excellent sarcasm, you can always trust a Brit to deliver. This bit of commentary covers the row over J.K. Rowling, Faulty Towers, etc. (FYI, I'm loving that J.K. Rowling has decided she has just enough eff-off money to tell the social justice bullies to pound sand. My hero!)

We Must Stop the Great Unraveling

"There is one way to stop the unraveling: Refuse the mob. We have seen again and again that the mob comes only for those who hope to please it. And when it does, no amount of apology will save you. We stand against the mob and all its aims. We stand against the chaos and violence, the silencing of debate, the purging of heretics, the rewriting of history, and the destruction of the greatest country in the world. We will defend the most majestic achievement of humankind, the United States of America, against the most ignoble impulse in human history, to tear down that which is good."

This pretty much speaks for itself, no?

J.D. Vance: Corporate America Dividing The Country, Preventing People From Unifying

"You know, if I was a member of a political movement that stood up for working people and found myself every single time on the side of Amazon, on the side of Apple, on the side of Google, I might ask myself, if I've actually chosen the right allies, and what it says about me, but unfortunately, too many folks on the left just aren't doing that."

Yep. I think Vance hits the nail on the head here. Woke-ism is a bourgeois movement, not a movement that actually gives a damn about disadvantaged people.

Iconoclasm as a Prelude to Woke Horrors?

This is from James Lindsay's website, so it's obviously going to be an essential read.

Les Miserables

Another good discussion of today's cultural revolutionaries/woke cultists.

---

And before I go, just a quick Twitter thread regarding the attack on sacred art:

Actually, the important thing is that Jesus is an ultimate symbol of SUBMISSION, not dominance/supremacy. It doesn't matter if he's depicted as white/black/Arab/whatever.

— The Right Geek (@TheRightGeek) June 23, 2020

Lower Standards Don't Help (Reprint)

This post was originally written three years ago, but it's still highly relevant.

In discussions of "privilege," I often hear feminists and minority leftists complain that their co-workers question their competence just because they are women or people of color. But why do you suppose that is? Could it be that affirmative action and other accommodations send an implicit message to the wider populace that "disadvantaged" populations can't hack it without special treatment and set-asides? The data paint a pretty clear picture: Affirmative action is not merely a tie-breaker. Some groups are being held to objectively lower standards. Did you really think people would fail to notice?

There are better ways to address different outcomes between groups than to abandon fairness and jigger the end results.

You can start, first of all, by forgetting about "learning styles" and "personal relevance" and actually teach - to every student - rigorous courses in literacy, history, mathematics, and science in the primary and secondary grades. Yes, black students can learn something from Shakespeare; W.E.B. Dubois certainly thought so, and nothing's changed in human nature since his age.

While you're at it, you can restore teachers' authority in the classroom by backing up their disciplinary decisions instead of questioning them at every turn. Don't assume without proof that imbalances in school suspensions and expulsions are the result of teacher and administrator bias, and don't ease up on the rules as a consequence of such an assumption. Every child, no matter his socioeconomic status, deserves to learn in a classroom free of disruption. Letting some disobedient minority kids off the hook to massage the numbers screws every other minority student who's actually trying to study.

Third, we have to stop pretending that all household structures are equally healthy. In reality, a lot of the "privilege" that leftist activists vociferously decry is the merely result of growing up in a two-parent family. If you have two involved parents around to check over your homework, monitor your grades, and read out loud to you before bed, you tend to do better in school. And when you do better in school -- well, the later dividends are obvious. Overall, we absolutely must tell the truth and start promoting marriage as a national ideal. Just as every child deserves an opportunity to learn in a quiet and safe environment, every child also deserves to have an intact family to lean on for emotional, financial, and intellectual support.

Fourth, we shouldn't tell kids that the cards are stacked against them. We should inspire them instead. Tell them how others in their particular situation sought out opportunity and rose above. Don't dwell on the "patriarchy" or "white supremacy." That only fosters learned helplessness instead of empowerment.

Fifth, don't reward young people for anything other than their actual achievements. Dispense with all prizes for good little girls and other favored "victims" and be honest for a change. No one can improve his skills without accurate and suitably critical feedback, so don't soft-pedal. If a novice writer's story is poorly conceived, tell him so. Don't shower him with trophies just because he happens to be black/gay/trans/whatever. Give him a chance to grow; don't nurture a complacent mediocrity.

For God's sake, people, look around. The left's program is clearly not working. Isn't it time we try something different?

Down with Double Standards

I have, of course, suggested this in other recent posts, but let me make it explicit:

I think we should all play by the same rules.

If you're going to argue that we should avoid large gatherings to prevent the spread of the coof, then fine: apply that standard across the board. Don't give me this BS that anti-shutdown demonstrations are bad-bad-terribad but BLM demonstrations are a-okay. Don't applaud massive protests in Brooklyn while simultaneously padlocking playgrounds in Jewish neighborhoods.

If you're going to argue that the police resort to physical force far too often, then fine: discuss all the relevant cases. Don't just talk about the black folks who've been unjustly killed. Talk about the white folks who've also been murdered under similar circumstances. Is it #BlackLivesMatter, or is it really #OnlyBlackLivesMatter?

And while we're at it, why are we lionizing black victims of police brutality but not the black people who've been victimized by their neighbors?

It bothers me - it really bothers me - that my Asian students essentially have to be academic gods to earn admission to top schools while students from more favored minorities have it much easier. Don't lie about this. We all know it's true. And in my opinion, this reality is suppressing black academic achievement. Why try to achieve top marks if you're going to get in with a more middling record?

It angers me that white and Asian scientists, who've spent years in focused study to get where they are, are now being told that they're racist because they balk at letting more "marginalized" scientists jump the queue for the sake of "equity." No: you know how you actually get equity? You start early by fixing our dysfunctional public education system so that everyone has the opportunity to learn the requisite math and science. You don't come in on the back end and demand that institutions hire "BIPOC" scientists because "muh diversity." Merit is not a white supremacist conspiracy.

And by the way, the above applies to artistic achievement too. If you want more "BIPOC" creators, start by clearing the institutional and cultural barriers to developing literacy and artistic skill. Don't just hand these creators high profile assignments and awards before they've been forced to work up the ranks like everyone else.

Right now, the left is actively encouraging laziness and grift. They are celebrating looters and terrorists and intellectual frauds who add nothing to our society -- while demonizing people who are willing to work, pay their own way, and behave like civilized human beings. It's appalling, and it needs to stop. 

Video: Benjamin Boyce, Mike Nayna & James Lindsay

This is a very long conversation, but if you have the time, I highly recommend it. James Lindsay in particular is a freakin' boss when it comes to challenging the critical theory/social justice warrior mindset. His website, New Discourses, is absolutely essential.

We Need Real Solutions, Not Ridiculous Pipe Dreams

This new mania for dismantling (or effectively dismantling) municipal police departments is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I've seen the left embrace in a long, long time.

I have an acquaintance on Facebook who was stationed in Panama City after Operation Just Cause, when police presence in the city was virtually nonexistent due to the collapse of the government. Here's some of what she had to say about the results:

1. First the few police that remained, banded together and stopped Americans so that they could get extort money.
2. All the stop signs and stop lights stopped working (government was gone as well) which meant that if you weren't a native of the city, you didn't know to stop at certain streets and wait for thinning traffic. But yea.. no traffic laws ... At least they still went on the same side of the street.
3. Anyone with any money lived in enclaves with guards. They bought their own security. Most women didn't go out anywhere with out family.
4. Anyone with a few bits of something were robbed by machete and/or beaten.
5. There were pockets of lawfulness where certain students who take over a block and guard it. They would pull together residents as militias. They would block the streets with bricks and other things so they could guard their neighborhoods. It was this alone that brought Panama City back to civilization because the students went block by block until they had the large about of the residents safe from riots.
6. Even after being their for four years when they had police, summer was riot season... including beatings and molotov cocktails. They liked to target the "bridge of the Americas."
7. All military personnel (US) were under curfew and were not allowed to go anywhere unless they were with two or more people.

When the stop lights began to work, certain individuals would pull people from their cars and beat them. I heard of a few assassinations happen too. Plus no one went anywhere without a big knife, gun, or AK47. 

It was terrifying because the first few months I was there some of the Panamanians would slip through the fences into the base and snipe. It pretty much died down after awhile and when the government went back, they went back to hating their government and stayed away from the US military. 

Two soldiers were driving a hum-vee on the main road and someone shot into the vehicle, killing the driver. When the US (and the military) asked for the killer (turned out he was a Senator's son), no one could find him. They packed him up and sent him to Cuba ... 

So it looks like the rich are fine and everyone else lives in a war zone.

The idea that we can completely replace professional, armed law enforcement with social workers and community members "trained in de-escalation" is pure fantasy. It is based on a utopian, Rousseau-inspired worldview that posits that people, as a rule, are basically good until they are corrupted by societal factors such as poverty and/or oppression. But anyone with a modicum of common sense knows this is emphatically not the case.

I'm a teacher. I've worked with small humans. They're adorable, but they're also absolute barbarians long before society has had much of a chance to influence how they behave. If a child sees a toy he wants, he will do anything - including pushing another child over - to get it. If you decline to give him a lollipop, he will sneak around you and steal that coveted sweet from your cupboard. And this is true of all children -- whether they're well-provided for or not.

And adults? Adults are more likely to be civilized due to experience and upbringing -- but even adults are not beyond pursuing what is evil and base for the sake of their own selfish desires. If crime is driven solely by society's failure to provide, how the hell does one explain white collar criminals, who presumably aren't struggling to survive from day to day? How do you explain kings (or dictators) who continually steal from their subjects despite their undeniable position of privilege and relative affluence?

Human nature is not innocent. While we all certainly have the capacity to be good, we are not naturally virtuous. Pro-social behavior comes from moral training; it does not magically appear once the body is housed, clothed and fed. So sure: you can dump money into so-called "community investment" (and we can discuss what will and will not be truly helpful), but all the welfare in the world will do nothing to fix the fundamental malady. Some people will simply scoff at education and employment programs in favor of crime because the latter requires no effort or skill and is often quite remunerative.

Thus, if you take our police away, you will get Panama after the fall of Noriega. That's a certainty. And the people who will suffer most, as my acquaintance relates, will be those who can't afford to pay for their own private security details. Gosh, I wonder how many black folks will find themselves in that unprotected category?

Whence Comes Dignity

I'm probably stepping on a rake here in being perfectly frank, but:

When #MeToo started to trend a while back, I immediately found its animating ideology wanting -- but I never dismissed the sincerity of its emotional core. I think it's legitimate for women to suspect they're getting a raw deal somehow; after all, we've essentially set up a dating ecosystem in which most women (notice I said "most") are strongly encouraged to fight their own instincts. Of course they feel dissatisfied. Of course they feel abused.

Similarly, I think #BlackLivesMatter, as a movement, often focuses on the wrong things in the wrong way -- but I also think black Americans do have something to complain about. They are being denied something absolutely critical to human flourishing -- but neither the verified white chattering class nor the dominant voices who claim to speak for Black America have accurately identified what's missing. Indeed, you have to dig deep into dissident black conversation to find any honest discussion of that absent ineffable variable: dignity.

Black Americans want to feel pride in themselves. And they should, I think. Up until quite recently, their history has been a story of success in the face of incredible headwinds. Their ancestors were people who, like Frederick Douglass, defied the law in order to become educated. Their ancestors were people who, in the heart of the Jim Crow South, built thriving businesses and became doctors and lawyers. Their ancestors were people who fought to keep their families together despite societal forces that threatened to rip them apart. Their ancestors were people who were closing education and income gaps long before government officials offered to "help." Their ancestors were, in short, a sturdy, admirable people. And yes: their story is an essential component of the American story and should be discussed in our schools.

Unfortunately, the activist set is not telling black Americans the tale I just related. Instead, these theorists are teaching young blacks that they have been victims for 400 years and that the only way out of that morass is to come to white America with their hands out.

Now, I happen to believe there are a few remaining structural barriers that need to be cleared to maximize equality of opportunity -- particularly when it comes to criminal justice, education, and work. I don't mean to suggest that we, as white Americans, have no responsibility here. But what I find deeply frustrating about the general tenor of the current discourse around race - and I briefly alluded to this in my post on Tuesday - is that black Americans are hardly ever assigned responsibilities of their own.

As a matter of fact, I genuinely feel like the aforementioned activists are treating black Americans like little children instead of like adults with agency. "Don't worry, dear," they seem to say. "We'll lower the standards for you." Many of the controversies that have blown up in recent years in re: race relations seem to turn on the idea that imposing any rules on blacks is racist -- that blacks should be allowed to do whatever they want whenever they want no matter how much they might disrupt the normal, race-neutral practices the rest of us respect to keep society predictable and civil. And many institutions, straining under activist pressure, are throwing the concept of merit out the window entirely, handing black Americans things they didn't actually earn out of a misguided desire to right cosmic wrongs. I'm sorry, but I find it very difficult to ignore how many low-quality intellects have been given academic clout - or even awards - mainly because they're black and "muh diversity." A Pulitzer for an essay on American history that serious historians (including Marxists!) critiqued as deeply skewed? Really?

(ETA: And then there's the unbelievable privilege BLM now enjoys in re: the Kung Flu, which just further confirms that outrageous double standards are in play.)

This white savior/black supplicant dynamic is profoundly undignified. People don't get any real self-esteem from relying entirely on the largess of others. Real self-esteem comes from handling your own crap and telling any naysayers to eff right off. And I think a lot of black Americans realize this on an unconscious level. Hence the anger and the nebulous claims that we are out to get them. Hence the delight some take in humiliating white Americans by forcing them to kneel and apologize for sins they didn't personally commit.

The truth is, while we as white Americans should take seriously the need for reform, we can't - and shouldn't - do everything for black people just because we feel guilty for things other white people did. All that does is degrade the black American and treat him as if he's an inferior Other. No: we should treat the black American like a full human being capable of meeting high expectations. Because, you know, they are capable. The history bears that out.

300% Done

I'll just let the Fave represent my current mood.

As I mentioned in my last post, virtually every American agrees that what happened to George Floyd was profoundly unjust. Indeed, on my TL, I've seen conservative after conservative propose a number of systemic fixes - including mandatory body cams and the end of qualified immunity - to address the problem of police brutality. Because even though such incidents are statistically uncommon, they are - for everyone - completely unacceptable.

That doesn't mean, though, that we must accept every. last. response to Floyd's murder. That doesn't mean we must accept the terroristic violence now engulfing many of our cities.

"But RG, can't you see that people have a right to be upset?"

Of course they do. We all have a right to our feelings. And yes: what happened to Floyd was hideous and should inspire outrage and a desire for reform. But I don't want to live in a society in which the left's apparent standard for a "justifiable reaction" is the universal. Please, for God's sake, imagine the chaos that would actually wreak. Imagine what would happen if we let every aggrieved individual take his anger out on anyone who happened to be in the way. No one - whether black, white, or polka-dotted - would feel safe!

Target didn't kill George Floyd. AutoZone didn't kill George Floyd. Uncle Hugo's didn't kill George Floyd. That black business owner who lost his bar didn't kill George Floyd. The people who might've moved into that block of affordable housing didn't kill George Floyd. St. John's Episcopal Church didn't kill George Floyd. If you approve of these riots, you're endorsing the targeting of innocent entities who weren't there and had nothing to do with said murder. Is that really what you mean to do? Think. THINK.

"RG, why are you valuing property over lives?"

Flag on the field! False dichotomy! You can in fact protect both simultaneously.

If the choice is between rescuing a baby from certain imminent death and preserving a wall, then sure, you knock down the wall for the sake of the life in danger. But I would like anyone who's throwing the above bull excrement at me to please - please - explain how trashing a neighborhood is going to result in any real change in how our police departments are run (and therefore save lives). Give me the citations and show your work. Because from where I sit, destroying a bunch of downtown businesses will change no minds and will only ruin lives. What, do you think those stores - and the jobs they represent - are just going to magically come back and everything will proceed as it did before? If so, you are unbelievably stupid.

No: I can already see where this is going to go because I live in the real world where actions have consequences. Some of those businesses simply won't return. Others will increase their prices to pay for their insurance premiums and loss prevention costs. And ultimately, the poor "marginalized" people you say you care about will see their standard of living decline as they struggle to find work and/or basic staples -- which, of course, will get you all howling about how racist and unfair it is that things cost more in inner city areas than they do out in the 'burbs because second and third order effects are things you just can't wrap your substandard brains around.

When you attack the economic lifeblood of an area, you are endangering lives, not saving them. Human beings are not meant to suckle forever at the government teat. Where there is little work, there is deep despair, drug addiction, high suicide rates, and other signs of social disorder. Why? Because we all get genuine, lasting meaning from our labor. So spare me this nonsense that I'm somehow callous for being concerned that businesses are getting looted.

Besides, the rioters are hardly limiting themselves to property damage. They have also been caught on camera beating business owners bloody. Don't those lives count?

"How else are we going to get people to listen?"

We were all ready to listen before the fires were lit. We all agreed that something needed to be done. But now? Now people are rapidly losing sympathy for your cause. It's the same thing that happened in 1968: the disorder at the Democratic Convention ultimately helped to elect Richard Nixon. When you stomp around threatening and injuring people who aren't guilty of the crimes you wish to see punished, the victims of your indiscriminate fury will start pining for your abject defeat and humiliation. And yes, I'm seeing that very longing already in the polls and on social media. The "Rooftop Koreans" are being lionized again. A lot of people want Trump to send in the military to restore order. And at the gun shops, business is brisk.  You had a whole nation behind you for about two seconds -- until you squandered it by LARPing as revolutionaries. Good job. Slow clap.

So how do you get people to listen? Drop all that critical race theory BS that has zero connection with reality, stop demanding that we white people bend the knee for crap we didn't actually do, and focus on the actual facts on the ground. Because to be perfectly blunt, "white people" are not the only ones at fault for the problems currently bedeviling the black community. The sooner "anti-racist" activists accept that - the sooner blacks are encouraged to own their own crap instead of foisting it all on outsiders - the sooner we can all have a real conversation.