Yes, You're Looking at Another Link Dump

Sorry! I've been gathering these for a solid month and I need to clear out my inbox. In the future, though, I intend to tack these onto the ends of real weekly posts.

No, The Growth of Progressive Christian Politicians is Not a Good Thing for America

[A Response to the New York Times Opinion Piece by Nicholas Kristof]

By Natasha Crain

"The growth of people claiming the name of Christ in politics is not necessarily a good thing. It depends on what they actually believe and how that will inform their political decisions. If the Bible is God’s Word for all time, as theologically conservative Christians believe, then the growth of politicians claiming Christ but rejecting the authoritative nature of the Bible is actually a bad thing. It leads to confusion in the public eye of what Christianity historically has been, and the decisions these politicians make will often be more aligned with a secular moral consensus developed from self-authority than with a moral standard developed from the Bible." 

- A good response to a tiresome, cliché-ridden article. "Jesus was a socialist!" is another boring rhetorical tic the left needs to retire.

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Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves

By Glenn Greenwald

"This USA Today article is thus yet another example of journalists at major media outlets abusing their platforms to attack and expose anything other than the real power centers which compose the ruling class and govern the U.S.: the CIA, the FBI, security state agencies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley oligarchs. To the extent these journalists pay attention to those entities at all — and they barely ever do — it is to venerate them and mindlessly disseminate their messaging like stenographers, not investigate them. Investigating people who actually wield real power is hard." 

- Greenwald is left-leaning, but his critiques of our journalistic class are outstanding.

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And speaking of left-leaning guys making good points (nonsense swipes at Trump aside):

I don't want politics mixed in with my medical decisions. And when all of our news sources for Covid information have an agenda to spin us, you wind up with a badly misinformed population. #BreakingNews #ScaredStraight pic.twitter.com/xnPZOafziI

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) April 17, 2021

 

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Michel Foucault and the Glamour of Evil

By Daniel J. Flynn

"News that Michel Foucault molested children recalls revelations that Hulk Hogan used steroids. The surprise comes only in response to surprise." 

- Obviously, the truth or falsehood of an idea is independent of the person who promotes it. All the same, it is telling that terrible ideas are often promulgated by despicable characters seeking to justify their own vices.

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Obey the Grand Inquisitor!

Tyranny and the Politics of the Common Good

By C. Bradley Thompson

"The time has come for our common-good reactionaries to explain themselves. Before we turn over the reins of government to Vermeule so that he can help us to 'form more authentic desires' and 'better habits,' we deserve answers to a few simple questions:

What is the 'common good'?

Where does it come from?

How is it known?

Is the 'common good' universal and timeless?

Who determines what the 'common good' is?

What role should government play in promoting and enforcing it?

What are the punishments for those who violate the laws enforcing the 'common good'?

Because the philosophic burden of proof is always on those who assert the positive, Vermeule must tell us what he means by the 'common good' and how it cashes out politically and legally. Otherwise, he’s just blathering gaseous platitudes with no basis in objective reality." 

- A libertarian historian's view on the flaws of today's traditionalist right.

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I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated

By Paul Rossi

"I am a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan. Ten years ago, I changed careers when I discovered how rewarding it is to help young people explore the truth and beauty of mathematics. I love my work.

"As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace 'antiracism' training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding." 

- A brave teacher's viral letter that deserves to be spread far and wide. In next week's post, I'm probably going to echo Rossi by writing yet another condemnation of this "antiracism" nonsense and its sustained attack on merit, as it is now threatening accelerated math education in the state of Virginia (and the advanced studies diploma too). 

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Trump didn't form a populist coalition. He was the result of one.

By Salena Zito

"The next time you see a Trump sign in someone’s yard, try to suppress your conditioned impulse and consider that it might be something more nuanced, more complex than the lazy stereotypical hot take anyone can post on social media." 

- Zito has been consistent in her honest, thoughtful takes on Trump supporters. If only more journalists and pundits followed her example.

BFTP: The Trouble with Grand Sociological Theories

This post applies to all "critical" activism -- and is still profoundly relevant.

This is another post that will likely attract ire. However, my own personal experiences - and the experiences of loved ones, friends, and students - compel me to speak up and counter what I feel is a dangerously distorted "theory" of the world whose accuracies are marred by much that is partially or wholly false.

Which personal experiences are germane to this discussion? When I was in my early twenties, I developed a severe, systemic, and rapidly progressive form of rheumatoid arthritis. It started with swelling and pain in the first two fingers of my right hand. Within months, it had rendered both my hands barely functional claws. Only a year later, I walked like an eighty-year-old lady, as the disease had taken out my feet, ankles, and knees. Fortunately, it was at this point that I was finally diagnosed and prescribed my first medications, and as a result, my condition now can be best described as "stable." I have never experienced a full remission and have never recovered full functionality, but at least the condition has been substantially slowed and I can actually move.

I know I am better off than many; I'm still basically ambulatory, for one. But there are limits beyond which my body cannot go and many ordinary activities that my body simply cannot do -- which is why I have often chosen to rent a cart for large conventions and why I have trouble at subway stops that lack elevators. I do know, intimately, how tough it is to navigate, say, Dragon Con when you're wheelchair-bound. I do know, intimately, that many spots in older cities are essentially inaccessible if you have mobility issues. I remember, vividly, breaking down one night after discovering that a certain retro party my friend wanted to attend in lower Manhattan could only be reached by climbing three flights of very steep stairs.

I also have two immediate family members who are in far worse straits than I. My mother suffers from an as yet unidentified immune deficiency that has left her open to a number of nasty infections, including one that has damaged a lobe of one of her lungs, one that has damaged her hearing in one ear, and one that basically destroyed what was left of her right knee (which had already been disabled by arthritis and replaced). She also has severe degenerative disc disease, which means, like me, she deals with limited mobility and chronic pain. My brother, meanwhile, was born albino and consequently has a vision impairment that has left him unable to do many things that we sighted folks take completely for granted. 

Here's the thing: Matt's experiences and mine are different. I will never be able to see exactly what Matt sees with his eyes, and unless Matt also develops my disease (or something similar), he will never know precisely what it's like to walk around in my skin. But because we lived under the same roof for roughly twenty years and we care for each other profoundly, we both still understand, at least on some level, the challenges the other one faces. Over the course of our relationship, we've developed imaginations capacious enough to comprehend, imperfectly but still sincerely, not only the differences we find in each other but also the differences we find in others. This is what happens when love leads the way.

All of these experiences - in addition to others I have yet to share - helped to drive my deeply disturbed and even angry reaction when a self-described "disability activist" visited my blog and started pushing a very aggressive view of the relationship between disabled persons and the larger society that is influenced, according to his own description, by the "social model of disability."

Read more at the original post.

New YouTube Channel Recommendations!

This gentleman focuses on what he feels - I think legitimately given his personal experience - are abuse dynamics in our political discourse.

This channel and the one below focus on how "critical" ideologies are corrupting education. As a teacher, I appreciate - and agree with - their commentary.

Stop Treating People Like Children

You know those two end pieces in every loaf of bread -- the pieces that are basically all crust? When my brother and I were growing up, our parents used to call those pieces the "special pieces." Why? Because they wanted us to willingly eat them. And I have to admit, when Matt and I were young, this worked like a charm. We would actually fight over those butt ends because we were convinced they were somehow better than the fluffier, whiter slices. 

Similarly, when my cousins were little, my aunt and uncle used to trick them into eating the bottom dregs of every cereal box by mixing them all together and dubbing the resulting concoction "cereal surprise." This too worked like gangbusters.

Since the beginning of time, I suspect, parents have had to use every psychological trick in the book to convince their kids to do things kids don't naturally want to do. The reason for this is pretty straightforward: children below a certain age simply aren't mature enough to understand, say, the tightness of a family budget. Kids below a certain age are also not ready to fully care for themselves and don't know how to wisely assess the world's dangers; for these things, they certainly need adult guidance.

But during the usual, healthy development process, parents must eventually loosen the reins. As children get older, they should learn how to do their own laundry, cook their own food, manage their own money, and make their own judgments in re: risks and rewards. As children get older, in other words, they should learn to be essentially independent. And back when the world was sane, we used to incentivize this maturation by not immediately swooping in and rescuing legal adults from their own bad choices -- and by simultaneously allowing said legal adults enormous latitude when it came to making decisions in their day-to-day lives.

Unfortunately, as several recent news items indicate, we now live under a regime that has stopped expecting grown adults to do what 99% of grown adults should have no trouble doing regardless of their socioeconomic status. Further, not content with merely giving us the tools to live our lives intelligently and well according to our own lights, our so-called betters have instead chosen to outright manipulate us into doing what they want. In short, our elites clearly perceive us as perpetual toddlers -- and they just as clearly get their kicks off of mothering us to death.

It's patently ridiculous to claim, for example, that requiring proof of ID to vote in an election is "the new Jim Crow." Getting a driver's license or a state ID is not a difficult thing to do; if it were, wouldn't we have already heard story upon story of people being unfairly barred from buying liquor, flying on airplanes, acquiring over-the-counter medication, etc.? But that hasn't stopped our nanny-staters from waxing eloquent about the poor, poor folks-of-color who've somehow lived their entire adult lives without needing an ID and therefore will be barred from voting by laws like Georgia's. Yeah, sure. Even if such people actually existed, why not use the time between now and the next election to reach out to those extraordinarily rare ID-less legitimate citizens and make sure they get their required documentation? Why not assume these ID-less voters are capable adults who can understand and fulfill basic legal mandates once they're explained -- particularly if help is provided?

It's also not some terrible imposition to ask adults to formally request absentee ballots during a designated time frame (especially when that time frame runs very generously from eleven weeks to eleven days before Election Day). Nor is it some unconscionable restriction to ask that all in-person voters come on particular days at particular hours (especially when those days include weekends and especially when the law also states explicitly that anyone standing in line at close of business on Election Day must be permitted to cast a ballot). And oh yes: it's also utterly laughable to suggest that people can't plan ahead and bring their own damned water to drink while they wait to vote (though of course, Georgia's law says that official poll watchers can bring people refreshments, so that isn't even a potential issue). 

(That water thing in particular reminds me of those feminists who were complaining about the air conditioning at work a while back. For eff's sake, what's stopping you from bringing a sweater to the office?)

Lots of things - lots of essential things - outside the elections process come with deadlines and restrictions. In most cities, buses and subways only run at particular times and only serve particular places. In most cities, most restaurants and stores are not open 24 hours a day. There are dates by which you must get your tax paperwork submitted to the feds and your state, dates by which you must apply for health coverage, dates by which you must mail applications to college or other special programs -- on and on. Demanding that elections be conducted at lawfully defined times does not limit your right to vote any more than closing your local grocery store overnight limits your right to eat -- or shutting down the Atlanta MARTA at Peachtree Center after 1:30 am limits your right to travel. One key understanding that comes with adulthood is the realization that you can't just do things whenever you feel like it. To respect the rights and time of other human beings, you have to learn how to manage your time and honor reasonable schedules and other civil boundaries.

Some may say at this point that leftists are only pretending to believe adult Americans are stupid and helpless in order to establish a porous election system that makes it virtually impossible to stop activists from cheating like the dickens -- and yes, that's no doubt one motivation in play. But I also think leftists harbor a good deal of sincere distrust in our collective ability to manage our own affairs -- and in no context is this viewpoint more apparent than in the discourse surrounding COVID-19. Here, public health officials have decided as a class that forthright delivery of accurate scientific information is insufficient to inspire "proper choices"-- that instead, they must resort to operant conditioning (and fear-mongering) to get their fellow citizens to comply with their dictates. Get your jab and you get a free donut like a good little boy or girl! Get your jab and maybe we'll start respecting your rights again!

Blech. I feel like barfing up three feet of my intestine.

I might get one of the vaccines once I've talked to my doctor about it. Given my pre-existing medical conditions, it's probably a good idea. Given my pre-existing medical conditions, I'm confronting a different risk calculus. But I can understand why healthier people might hesitate to step up for their shots. These vaccines were rushed to market via an emergency program; they're not like, say, the MMR, DPT, shingles, flu or pneumonia shots that come with years of scientific data that confirm their safety. Given that 99%+ of healthy younger adults are likely to survive a COVID infection essentially unscathed, it's entirely reasonable to choose the small known risk (i.e. the risk of serious complications from COVID) over the risk of unknown size (i.e. getting an experimental vaccine). And it's entirely reasonable, too, to wait a bit to see how others are affected by the COVID vaccines before you yourself decide to get your own. 

And please note too: we're not (yet) babying - or forcing - people into getting their seasonal flu shots even though the flu can rival COVID in its lethality. We're not (yet) proposing, say, "smoke-free passports" that grant bearers special access to travel and other economic activities. And while some localities have tried to curb our obesity epidemic with soda taxes and the like, we haven't (yet) robbed the average American of his fundamental right to buy a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew if he so chooses. Why is that, I wonder? What makes COVID so gosh-darned special that basic acknowledgment of our personal liberty must be thrown out the window and replaced with the firm hand of the Great State Mommy?

Most of us are not brain damaged. Most of us are perfectly capable of getting a state ID and/or filling out a ballot request. Most of us are perfectly capable of looking at an in-person voting schedule and choosing which day and time would work best for our personal situations. And most of us are perfectly capable of assessing the risk COVID poses to ourselves and our family members. Those few of us who aren't capable of these things due to illiteracy or a cognitive disability can and should get help -- but the rest of us need not be coddled by state officials looking for ever more excuses to wreck our democracy and control our lives.