Category Archives: Etiquette

NEW COLUMN: Private Property And COVID: Choice, Not Force, Part 2

America, Argument, COVID-19, Etiquette, IMMIGRATION, Private Property

NEW COLUMN IS “Private Property And COVID: Choice, Not Force, Part 2.” It’s now on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

The managerial elites find themselves in a pickle. The coronavirus pandemic is a serious event. Members of a serious society treat it as such; they look out for one another—and they don’t flee into conspiracy and denial in order to cope with the incongruity of it all.

Alas, courtesy of its globalist elites, America is no longer a society; much less a serious one. In the absence of solidarity between citizens, social capital—”goodwill, fellowship, sympathy”—is scarce. Hence the struggle to mount a coherent response to the pandemic.

Centrally Planned Diversity Begets Disunity

Coherence is certainly not a thing immigration policy has supplied. If anything, policy makers have cheapened citizenship.

The populations from which chosen, future citizens are drawn come to America not in search of constitution and community. Rather, the corporate state’s preferred immigrants bring their own community with them and hyphenate its members.

On arrival, immigrants are encouraged to cling to a militant distinctiveness. The only tacit agreement shared by a majority of Americans, native and newcomer, is that America’s exceptionalism obligates it to both control the world through military and moral crusades and welcome it to America.

The extent to which Americans have, nevertheless, managed to galvanize logistically against COVID-19 is a testament to just how energetic a people we are.

Still, the credentialed, cognitive elites who’ve turned the country into this multicultural, money-focused, built-on-sand Tower of Babel, now find that many Americans—united by commerce, not creed—don’t want to go the extra mile for the strangers who make up their country.

Contrast the U.S., vis-à-vis COVID, with a more homogeneous nation like Japan (or Singapore, or Taiwan or South Korea).

Thirteen minutes and 35 seconds into this interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Fox News’ Martha MacCallum quizzes him about Japan.

The country, 127-million strong, has had only 846 COVID deaths, and has, according to Ms. MacCallum, not implemented the social mitigation strategies seen in the U.S. and Europe.

Adjusted for population size, this is as though the U.S had suffered only 2,198 COVID deaths! For Japan to “live up” to America’s COVID cull-rate, 38,484 Japanese would have to have perished from the coronavirus.

Other than that its people sport a culture of fastidious cleanliness and have long-since adopted the etiquette of masking—you and I sense what else is afoot in Japan.

So does Dr. Fauci. Certain counties, conceded the good doctor, have “different sizes and different borders, and different infusions from outside.”

Differently put, Japan is almost completely homogeneous, with little immigration, and, consequently, a strong sense of unity. Citizens are more inclined to pull together in common purpose when there is a fellow feeling to bind them.

“The measures that most successfully contain the virus … all depend on how engaged and invested the population is,” explains Ed Young, a science reporter. All the testing, tracing and isolating are for naught if there is an “antagonistic relationship” with and between the people involved in the effort.

And America, it’s fair to say, is no longer a people in any meaningful way; it is a Walmart with missiles, where the fusillades we direct at one another. …

… READ THE REST… NEW COLUMN IS “Private Property And COVID: Choice, Not Force, Part 2.” It’s now on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

 

NEW COLUMN: Real Societies Use Prophylactics, Part 1

Constitution, COVID-19, Etiquette, Law, Pop-Culture

THE NEW COLUMN IS “Real Societies Use Prophylactics, Part 1.” It appeared on WND.COM, and The Unz Review and is currently featured on American Greatness .

An excerpt:

Ideas about liberty have evolved, thankfully.

Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist, received a Nobel Prize for performing lobotomies on his vulnerable, unconsenting psychiatric patients—or victims. Today, he is the just recipient of the contempt of decent mental-health practitioners. (Those who do not hold him in contempt are not decent.)

The same fate may await Alan Dershowitz’s status as a constitutional scholar for his coronavirus jurisprudence. Dershowitz has stated that the State has the power of precedent to drag you to a doctor’s office and plunge a vaccine-filled syringe into your veins.

Inconvenienced Vs. Violated

Contra Dershowitz’s forced-vaccination violence, and contrary to the opinions of many of my friends on the Right, social distancing and masking are mere inconveniences. They are not rights-infringing. Being inconvenienced is not the same as being unfree.

That you are asked to sanitize, suite-up and give people space means only that you are inconvenienced. That you are being requested not to encroach upon others—not to rub-up against them, or expel sputum on them: This is but an inconvenience.

In the context of a pandemic, these are quotidian requests, to be associated with civility and comity. They crimp your style, not your rights. The thing that infringes on your natural rights to sustain life and liberty is the lockdown.

Sequestering you so that you cannot feed yourself and your dependents is a violation of both natural and constitutional rights.

But prevention? Please!

Prevention is about delayed gratification. When you go out on the town or to work, you have to make an effort to protect others.

After all, isn’t asking members of society to cover-up and keep a distance as non-invasive as a request can get? Give it some thought.

Real men use prophylactics: Remember that ad campaign? …

... READ THE REST… THE NEW COLUMN IS “Real Societies Use Prophylactics, Part 1.” It is currently featured on American Greatness.

 

 

UPDATED (4/27/020): INDIA And COVID-19

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Etiquette, Healthcare

The Covid-19 case count in India is, so far, low. Or, rather, Indians are not getting infected in the numbers one would expect! The country’s population count is just shy of 1.4 billion.

The number of Indians presumed to be infected with COVID-19 is a mere 26,283. Total deaths stand at 825.

Perhaps the disease has “yet to hit India in a widespread way.” Perhaps it arrived in India late and has yet to climb its deadly curve.

If Indian coronavirus fortunes persist, we might look into their eating habits.

A large number of them don’t eat cows, they worship them. And they absolutely love their anti-inflammatory Curcumin, Tumeric, Curry and Cumin spices.

India has more vegetarians than the rest of the world put together.[62] In 2007, UN FAO statistics indicated that Indians had the lowest rate of meat consumption in the world.[63] India, the world’s second most populous country, has over 500 million vegetarians.

UPDATE (4/27/020): “India coronavirus: The ‘mystery’ of low Covid-19 death rates.”

Chris Matthews Ousted For Not Being A Girly Guy

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Etiquette, Feminism, Gender, Media, Sex

Chris Matthews has always been a tough-talking, gnarled interviewer. His style is manly and abrupt. You can’t have that in the Age of the Girly Boy—where men are expected to be clones of the females with whom they work. Or, else.

Guy talk, like calling a woman, actress Kerry Washington, “a total knockout,” and commenting to one Laura Bassett, “Why haven’t I fallen in love with you yet?”—those won’t do in the age of the wimp.

Matthews also used silly hyperbole to describe Mr. Sanders’s victory in the Nevada caucuses, and he dared to question, rather than just accept, E. Warren’s version of Mr. Bloomberg’s alleged sexual misconduct.

Ageism is also a factor.  A stupid society worships the stupid. Unfortunately, in our age, The Age of the Idiot, the younger the individual, generally the more ill-educated and illiterate he or she is.

Irony of ironies: Conservative-minded people (check) are more likely to defend Matthews on principle than progressives, creators of the culture that has just cancelled him.

New York Times:

… Mr. Matthews, 74, had faced mounting criticism in recent days over a spate of embarrassing on-air moments, including a comparison of Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign to the Nazi invasion of France and an interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren in which the anchor was criticized for a condescending and disbelieving tone.

On Saturday, the journalist Laura Bassett published an essay accusing Mr. Matthews of making multiple inappropriate comments about her appearance, reviving longstanding allegations about the anchor’s sexist behavior. By Monday, his position at the news network he helped build had become untenable.

Accompanied by his family, Mr. Matthews walked onto the “Hardball” set inside NBC’s Washington bureau shortly before 7 p.m. to deliver a brief farewell. His longtime crew members, who had been told of his plans roughly an hour earlier, looked on stunned.

“I’m retiring,” Mr. Matthews told viewers in a solemn and brief monologue as his broadcast began at 7. “This is the last ‘Hardball’ on MSNBC.”

His sudden signoff took many colleagues by surprise — “Wait. What?” the MSNBC anchor Katy Tur wrote on Twitter — but it followed days of discussions with Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC and one of the early executive producers of “Hardball.”

Mr. Griffin, who is close with Mr. Matthews, traveled to Washington over the weekend to discuss his future in person, according to three people who requested anonymity to describe sensitive conversations.

On the air on Monday, Mr. Matthews made clear that the timing of his exit was not entirely his choosing. “Obviously, it isn’t for a lack of interest in politics,” he said, going on to apologize for his past insensitive comments.

“Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were OK are never OK,” he said. “Not then, and certainly not today.” …

… Commenting on the Nevada caucuses, Mr. Matthews compared Mr. Sanders’s victory to Germany’s takeover of France in World War II, drawing the ire of many liberals. He later apologized on-air, saying, “In the days and weeks and months ahead, I will strive to do a better job myself of elevating the political discussion.”

A day later, he was under fire again, this time for repeatedly questioning Ms. Warren about her assertion that Michael R. Bloomberg had mistreated his female employees. Ms. Warren was referring to a widely reported anecdote, and Mr. Matthews’s disbelief was criticized as sexist and dismissive.

On Friday, yet another faux pas: Mr. Matthews confused the identities of two African-American politicians, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Jaime R. Harrison, a Democrat running for Senate in that state. “Big mistake; mistaken identity, sir, sorry,” Mr. Matthews said after he was corrected on-air. …

* Chris Matthews, Via Slate