Category Archives: Argument

NEW COLUMN: Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village

Argument, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality, The State

NEW COLUMN is “Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

An excerpt:

Sen. Kamala Harris talks a lot about “our American values.” Ditto the rest of the female candidates who’ve declared for president in the busy Democratic field. They all lecture us about “values.”

“Our American values are under attack,” Harris has tweeted. “Babies are being ripped from their parents at the border …”

As her own proud “know your values moment,” the Democrat from California pinpoints the U.S. Senate Supreme Court confirmation proceedings inflicted on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

To manipulate Americans, politicians have always used the values cudgel.

With respect to immigration, the idea is to impress upon gullible Americans that the world has a global Right of Return to the U.S. Fail to accept egalitarian immigration for all into America; and you are flouting the very essence of Americanism. (Or, to use liberal argumentation, you’re Hitler.)

When politicians pule about the importance of preserving “our values,” they mean their values: Barack Obama’s values, Hillary Clinton’s values, Angela Merkel’s values, Chucky Schumer’s values, Jeff Bezos’ values, the late John McMussolini’s values, Lindsey Graham’s values, and Jared and Ivanka’s values (but not Trump’s).

When a politician preaches about “the values that make our country great,” to quote Mrs. Clinton, chances are they mean multiculturalism, pluralism, wide-swung borders, Islam as peace, communities divided by diversity as a net positive, and the Constitution (it mandates all the above, just ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg) as a living, breathing, mutating philosophical malignancy.

For them, “protecting” the abstraction that is “our way of life” trumps the protection of real individual lives. “We must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are,” dissembled Obama in the waning weeks before he was gone. The empty phrase is meant to make the sovereign citizen—you—forget that government’s most important role, if not its only role, is to protect individual life.

In his last few addresses, Obama promised to speak up on “certain issues,” in times when he imagined “our core values may be at stake.” Likewise, in delivering her Control-Alt-Delete speech against the Deplorables, Clinton had asserted that “our country is great because we’re good. … Donald Trump disregards the values that make our country great.” The two’s groupthink, notwithstanding, only individuals can be virtuous, not collectives.

Self-government, and not imposed government, implies that society, and not The State, is to develop value systems. The State’s role is to protect citizens as they go about their business peacefully, living in accordance with their peaceful values. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Kamala’s Collectivist Values Village.” It’s now on WND.COM, The Unz Review and Townhall.com.

Why We In The West Care So For Animals (Or Should)

Argument, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Justice, Law, Morality, Reason, The West

Writes HENRY STEPHENSON, of O’Fallon, Illinois:

… Laws protecting animals are perfectly justifiable, not because [animals] have rights, but because we value their welfare and are repulsed by acts of cruelty against them. Upholding such laws does not require the cascade of nonsense that would ensue from pretending that animals have moral or legal standing.

HENRY STEPHENSON,
O’Fallon, Illinois

I would put it thus:

We care for animals and codify that care in law, not because animals have human rights, but because of our own humanity.

The Economist (Letters, Jan 12th 2019)

Or, as Schopenhauer mused:

UPDATED (2/27/019): Immigration: A Look-Away Issue For Neocons & Lite Libertarians

Argument, IMMIGRATION, Labor, libertarianism, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Race

Michael Medved does the same as does Tim Carney in explaining the dismal situation of the working class. From a tony event, far from the madding working-class, Carney tweets this:

“The working class has lost access to the strong institutions of civil society that are the infrastructure of the good life. That’s my thesis,” states Carney, “to explain immobility, retreat from marriage, and Trump.”

For working-class misery, neoconservatives and lite libertarians blame everything BUT mass immigration, diversity, loss of community and sense of place. Anything but the truth.

That’s my thesis.

Conservatives engage in WhatAboutism:

 

NEW COLUMN: Slate’s Resident Idiot Slanders Jewish Woman — Me

Argument, Judaism & Jews, Justice, Propaganda, Race, Racism, South-Africa

NEW COLUMN IS “Slate’s Resident Idiot Slanders Jewish Woman — Me.” It’s currently on WND.com and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

When Slate magazine went after President Trump’s former speech writer, Darren Beattie, it chose to libel this writer, as well.

That’s a bully’s calculus: If you can, why not ruin the reputation of another individual, just for good measure?

Ruining reputations by labeling and libeling unpopular others is all in a day’s work for the bully, who has nothing in his authorial quiver but ad hominem attack.

The individual who penned an unsourced hit piece on me is Slate magazine’s designated “chief news blogger.”

A hit piece is “a published article or post aiming to sway public opinion by presenting false or biased information in a way that appears objective and truthful.”

Our intrepid journalist does not even feign objectivity.

Indeed, nothing screams Fake News like a “newsman” engaging in sloppy slander.

Incidentally, double-barreled surnames are largely a feminist affection. “Mathis-Lilley” happens to be male. Or, rather, an excuse for a man. Real men don’t bully, berate and bitch baselessly.

That’s what my many dogged, anti-Semitic, unmanly readers do. (Yes, I’m a Jewish, independent writer, the daughter of a scholarly, penniless rabbi. Bullies invariably target the weakest.)

The Mathis-Lilley article was published on August 20, this year, in the section called “The Slatest.” (Slate does cutesy and corny quite well.)

Mathis-Lilley lies throughout the piece, starting with the title:

“White House Speechwriter Appeared on Panel With Author Who Compared Black South Africans to Cannibals.”

It didn’t happen. No such comparisons were made. Cannibalism serves merely as metaphor in my book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.”

The origin of the title is expressly and unambiguously explained in the Introduction. “It is inspired by Ayn Rand’s wise counsel against prostrating civilization to savagery.” (p. 8)

The exact Rand quote is citation No. 15 in “Into the cannibal’s Pot.” It comes courtesy of “Robert Mayhew (ed.), Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A (New York, 2005).”

Unlike Mathis-Lilley’s unsourced material in Slate, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is topped and tailed with hard evidence, and sports over 800 endnotes.

Based on the evidence presented, readers come to see “that South Africans had been tossed into the metaphorical cannibal’s pot.” (p. 9)

These are facts, not slander. Slander is Slate’s purview. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Slate’s Resident Idiot Slanders Jewish Woman — Me,” is currently on WND.com and the Unz Review.