Category Archives: Political Philosophy

UPDATE III (12/13/018): A New Kind Of Bi-Partisan Non-thinking

Celebrity, Conservatism, Democrats, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Philosophy, Republicans

Wikipedia calls Candace Owens an “American conservative commentator, and activist.”

I call Samantha Bee a smarmy, left-liberal—one among many—who purports to do comedy.

Yet the aforementioned Owens calls Bee a “liberal thinker.” (I believe that such a pronouncement was made on Martha MacCallum’s “The Story,” or on another of those interchangeable programs.)

The above is a new kind of non-thinking.

So is the self-explanatory Samantha-Bee contretemps below:

Bee came under fire for calling Ivanka Trump a cunt. “You know, Ivanka, that’s a beautiful photo of you and your child,” Bee said as the photo flashed onto the screen, “but let me just say, one mother to another: Do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless cunt! He listens to you!”

The moment faced harsh criticism, both from the White House, which called her statement “vile and vicious,” and from some on the left, who argued that calling women “cunts” reduces them to their genitalia and is a slur that’s meant to teach women that their bodies are disgusting and shameful. (Bee also received praise from others on the left, who argued that cunt is just a word and that the real issue is Donald Trump’s immigration practices.) In the wake of the backlash, Bee tweeted an apology to both Ivanka Trump and her viewers, saying, “I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.”

UPDATE I (6/13):

ON THE OTHER SIDE, THERE IS Chris Cuomo, part of CNN’s thought-police enforcement. Here he goes after Republican Corey Stewart, who’s for the working man, by… calling Stewart a white supremacist and a racist. Is that’s all the filthy libs have?

UPDATE II (12/11/018):

MORE Little League cat fight.  My term for the bickering between two “giants” of conservative thought: Candace and Tomi, aforementioned.

 

UPDATE III (12/13/018): Speechless at the hubris:

It’s Hard To Believe It, But The French STILL Educate Their School Kids

Education, Europe, Intelligence, Kids, Political Philosophy

Still on the topic of education (previous post is “St. John’s: The Most Rigorous College In America & What Every Young Mind Needs”):

What’s of interest in the Economist article, “The End of the French Intellectual: From Zola to Houllebecq,” are these tidbits:

Attendance rose this year at the annual Paris book fair. Regional literary festivals are thriving. Philosophy is still a compulsory part of the school curriculum.
And last year the French elected a president who has a degree in philosophy and can cite Molière by heart. France may have lost its great intellectuals, but it has certainly not lost its intellectualism.

So French kids must still study philosophy. I wonder if it’s a rigorous course? And President Macaroni knows some good stuff, aside globalism and multilateralism. Molière is brilliant. So funny.

While there is pressure to dumb down, the French have not yet replaced history with social studies agitprop.

I’ll leave you with this hint at how good French schooling may be: “France is one of the countries where a pupil’s social background is one of the strongest predictors of his or her subsequent achievement.”

The French have not yet done the educational leveling we in America do to ensure that 43% of marks handed out in university are As.

Other than the educational information, the writer of “The End of the French Intellectual: From Zola to Houllebecq” disdains France’s few “reactionary essayists” and thinkers (namely right-leaning thinkers).

So much so that, having mentioned his disappointment at the rise the likes of “Éric Zemmour, a reactionary essayist, and Alain Finkielkraut, a formerly left-wing philosopher turned critic of multiculturalism”—the writer concludes that “France may have lost its great intellectuals.”

Better good schools for the kids, than the likes of that lefty degenerate, Mr. Sartre.

UPDATE II (5/14): Some Tests Of Left-Liberalism

Communism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, South-Africa

Leftists often parade as rightists, especially among libertarians. But they let things slip.

The hallmarks of a consummate leftist are:

1. He’ll rabbits on about the evils of McCarthyism, when Joe McCarthy was an American hero.

2. He’s wont to compare “bad” countries—the lefty usually chooses Israel—to apartheid South Africa, showing a knee-jerk leftist sensibility and absolutely no clue about apartheid.

Please add your litmus tests for leftism, which, naturally, includes most conservatives.

UPDATE I (4/20):

3. Hating on James Burnham (and his ilk) under the guise that he was once a Trotskyist. Not all former Trotskyists (like Michael Medvend) are worthless and worse. Burnham was on the wrong side before converting to Old Rightism, but in “Suicide of the West” and “Managerial Revolution” he came to embody the best of Old the Right. Monumental works. Of course Jeet heert, editor at the New Republic, would hate Burnham. All lefties do.

UPDATE II (5/14):

Monarchy:

That’s another thing that distinguishes left from right libertarian: the right kind (all 10 of us) likes monarchy, doesn’t cheer the prospects of a left-wing, tacky, radical feminist, Megan Markle, dismantling it. Read “Mobocracy Vs. Monarchy.”

Trashing Populism: Dim-Bulb Academic Vs. Deplorables

IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Political Economy, Political Philosophy, Populism

The NEW COLUMN, “Trashing Populism: Dim-Bulb Academic Vs. Deplorables,” exposes populism-bashing elites like Kevin D. Williamson, formerly of National Review, who said this about about Deplorables: “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die”:

An excerpt:

To say that academic elites don’t like ordinary folks is to state the obvious.

To them, Lanford, Illinois—the fictional, archetypal, working-class town, made famous by Roseanne and Dan Conner—is not to be listened to, but tamed.

A well-functioning democracy depends on it.

Taming Fishtown—Charles Murray’s version of Landford—is the thread that seems to run through  a new book, “The People vs. Democracy,” by one Yascha Mounk.

You guessed it. Mr. Mounk is not an American from the prairies; he’s a German academic, ensconced at Harvard, and sitting in judgment of American and European populism.

If only he were capable of advancing a decent argument.

“The number of countries that can plausibly be described as democracies is shrinking,” laments Mounk (“Populism and the Elites,” The Economist, March 17, 2018):

“Strongmen are in power in several countries that once looked as if they were democratizing … The United States—the engine room of democratization for most of the post-war period—has a president who taunted his opponent with chants of ‘lock her up’ and refused to say if he would accept the result of the election if it went against him.”

Elites ensconced in the academy are likely selected into these mummified institutions for a certain kind of ignorance about political theory or philosophy.

Plainly put, a chant, “lock her up,” is speech, nothing more. This Trump-rally chant might be impolite and impolitic, but on the facts, it’s not evidence of a “strongman.”

Notice how, deconstructed, nearly every utterance emitted by the technocratic and academic elites turns out to be empty assertion?

Even the subtitle of the book under discussion is sloppy political theory: “Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It” implies that democracy is the be-all and end-all of liberty. Quite the opposite.

America’s Constitution-makers did everything in their power (except, sadly, heed the Anti-Federalists) to thwart a dispensation wherein everything is up for grabs by government, in the name of the people. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN IS “Trashing Populism: Dim-Bulb Academic Vs. Deplorables.” It’s available also on WND.com, Constitution.com, the Unz Review, and others.