Category Archives: Reason

Dr. Seuss And The Wussification Of The West

Argument, Education, English, Literature, Logic, Race, Racism, Reason, The West

Tucker Carlson’s defense of some purged Dr. Seuss books is plain wrong: “Seuss was not a racist” was the gist of Tucker’s defense.

But before deconstructing the TV host’s conservative, typically defeatist argument, here is the latest in the saga of Dr. Seuss and the wussification of the West, from the New York Times:

Six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be published because of their use of offensive imagery, according to the business that oversees the estate of the children’s author and illustrator.

In a statement on Tuesday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises said that it had decided last year to end publication and licensing of the books by Theodor Seuss Geisel. The titles include his first book writing under the pen name Dr. Seuss, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” (1937), and “If I Ran the Zoo” (1950).

“These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” Dr. Seuss Enterprises said in the statement. The business said the decision came after working with a panel of experts, including educators, and reviewing its catalog of titles.

Mr. Geisel, whose whimsical stories have entertained millions of children and adults worldwide, died in 1991. The other books that will no longer be published are “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

In “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” a character described as “a Chinaman” has lines for eyes, wears a pointed hat, and carries chopsticks and a bowl of rice. (Editions published in the 1970s changed the reference from “a Chinaman” to “a Chinese man.”) In “If I Ran the Zoo,” two characters from “the African island of Yerka” are depicted as shirtless, shoeless and resembling monkeys.

A school district in Virginia said over the weekend that it had advised schools to de-emphasize Dr. Seuss books on “Read Across America Day,” a national literacy program that takes place each year on March 2, the anniversary of Mr. Geisel’s birth.

“Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss,” according to the statement by the district, Loudoun County Public Schools.

An example of “wussification,” namely the melding of “wimp” and “pussy” to make a wussy, is this fretful headline: “Parents grapple with racist images in Dr. Seuss books.”

You “grapple” with a shortage of food; with the fact that your kids are not learning to speak, read and write English proficiently. You “grapple” with footage of Kamala Harris, swallowed whole and  subjected to the peristaltic movements of a python snake, as he digests her—to pull or to publish the ostensibly upsetting images?

But you don’t “grapple” with Dr. Seuss content.

And, yes, Dr. Seuss Enterprises rolled over, conceding to cancelling its own books.

Tucker’s defense:

“Dr. Seuss was not a racist,” Carlson asserted. “He was an evangelist against bigotry. He wrote an entire shelf of books against racism, and not in a subtle way. They were clearly, explicitly against racism. That was the whole point of writing them, to teach children not to be racist.”

Actual racism in the targeted literature should be a peripheral issue, or no issue at all.

The Argument from Freedom means arguing process, not substance.

Whether he intended it or not, the premise of Tucker’s defense is that if we do detect legitimate racism in literature—there is a case for banning it. (Tucker didn’t mean it that way comes the counter-argument. This, however, is what the structure of his argument portends. The premise of Tucker’s argument is precisely that.)

And freedom means that politically impolite books may be published and read freely. Freedom means no book banning. Period!

Moreover, banning books demands a higher authority that decides for the rest of us. As does banning  assume a lack of choice and agency among individual human beings.

It’s called freedom. The Argument from freedom means arguing for Mein Kampf as well as for McElligots Pool. A free market in ideas.

And not because of history, blah, blah, blah; namely, so that we don’t forget it or repeat it, as I heard it enunciated by radio mouth Jason Rantz, the other day. Mein Kampf, and any literature, needs to be available in a free society to free men and women who want it.

In the face of the cancellation of conservatives, the latter invariably just keep making these logically impoverished “arguments.” In this case, it’s the Argument from Hitler: “I want what Hitler got, Ebay. Me too, Amazon.” Or, call it a kind of “WhatAboutism”: Amazon sells Hitler’s book, why not Dr. Seuss’s?

“Conservatives,” tweets “Musil Protege,” “start arguments by legitimizing the premises of stupid questions. Then they condone presentism. As Audrey says in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan: “Has it ever occurred to you that our world judged by the standards of Jane Austen’s time would (look ridiculous)?”

Most great literature doesn’t meet the sub-standards of the woke illiterate who control the means of intellectual production, these being schools (primary, secondary, tertiary), press, publishing print, think tanks, Deep Tech and Deep State.

Much of the literary canon—the greatest works of literature—is guaranteed to violate woke racial dogma.

Shall we ban Shakespeare for Othello?

*(Christopher Dolan/The Times-Tribune via AP)

MATH: The Problem With Conservatives? They Run From Racial Reality

Affirmative Action, Ancient History, Conservatism, Education, Intelligence, Race, Racism, Reason, Science, The West

The problem with math is that it can be—how shall we put it?—mean to certain minorities. The problem with conservatives? They run from such racial realities.

Math as racist is not a new angle in the war for egalitarianism in aptitude.

Some people can do math well; others less so. Still others not at all. There are aggregate discrepancies between the sexes and between the races in the facility with mathematics.

(There has been a link to the work of La Griffe du Lion, on the ilanamercer.com Resources page (Junk Science category), since the website’s inception. His explosive work was allowed back then.)

These days, however, kids are being taught that, given enough Kale, care and instruction from formative figures—everyone has a chance at achieving a similar aptitude. “You can do anything you put your mind to,” goes the parental and pedagogic refrain.

No wonder anger rises among the less proficient when reality bites and puts the lie to the fiction of an egalitarian distribution of talent.

If some fail miserably in certain fields, why, the deficit is said to be not in the child but in the “system,” the teacher, the topic, or the particular discipline.

And if patterns of failure correlate with racial groupings; voila! It’s systemic. See, “‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?” Video included (for those who, unlike me, do not prefer text).

Anti-white activists—let us call them what they are, please—are now claiming math is a white supremacist discipline, not least because it is also an objective science with right or wrong answers. There is no relativism to it; no, “Hey Johnny, that’s an interesting answer, why don’t you try that new equation in the next bridge you design?

Trust conservatives to never cop to the fact that complex math was the invention of Westerners. Oh, no!

As is the wont of conservatives, they apologize for any white involvement in such greatness as is math.

Tucker Carlson’s guest takes the tired conservative tack. Denounce and deprecate Western achievement:

“Math is not a white discipline, how absurd,” says Tucker’s guest.

Okay, Miss obsequious.

More advanced mathematics can be traced to ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago. Ancient mathematician Pythagoras had questions about the sides of a right triangle. His questioning, research, and testing led to a basic understanding of triangles we still study today, known as the Pythagorean Theorem.
Most experts agree that it was around this time (2,500 years ago) in ancient Greece that mathematics first became an organized science.

If it’s me, I’m owning it.

Beginning in the 6th century BC with the Pythagoreans, with Greek mathematics the Ancient Greeks began a systematic study of mathematics as a subject in its own right. Around 300 BC, Euclid introduced the axiomatic method still used in mathematics today, consisting of definition, axiom, theorem, and proof.

Wikipedia.

Next, Miss Millennial parrots the exhausted cliche about “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations,” namely the “myth” that students of color can’t achieve to standards, and therefore the standards must be lowered.

Both host and guest feel safe in their sanctimony, ignoring the well-established and enduring “racial achievement gap in the United States” in mathematics.

 

UPDATED (2/22): NTSB, so nerdy and white.

 

Fake News USA Assert The Security Of The Election System, BUT Refuse To Investigate It

Argument, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Journalism, Media, Reason, Technology

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond and his American circle-jerk of progressive, activist reporters ought to take lessons from BBC’s James Clayton, of “Click,” a BBC program.

Six minutes and 12 seconds into the clip on digital voting, the coverage of “serious security issues” begins. Techies who’ve “reversed engineered voting systems” are worried.

BBC News clearly still does the job Fake News USA refuses to do: investigate the security of the election system, not simply assert it.

Jeremy Diamond, a specimen in the national, journalistic circle jerk, is CNN’s White House correspondent. He’s a reporter, not an opinion-purveyor. Yet opinion is what he and his cohort purvey.

While reporting, Diamond will constantly express his opinion by exclaiming how “remarkable” and “outlandish” it is that President Trump wishes to overturn “a democratically held election.”

Breathy exclamations of disgust, surprise and frustration have no place in the repertoire of a reporter. It’s one thing, moreover, had CNN and Mr. Diamond investigated the election-fraud claims wending their way through the Courts—there are constitutional violations uninvestigated by them, too. But they don’t. The aforementioned BBC program, Click, clearly has no issue investigating and concluding that digital voting, for one, is fraught.

Had the American media done the work required; then they could legitimately say, “Having investigated and reported on the election fraud allegation, we find that there is no …”

But Diamond and his CNN crooks do not argue their case; they use their powerful positions in front of the camera to assert their claims, relying on viewers not to know the difference.

The same can be said of every other reporter on the CNN and MSNBC Fake News makers. They all offer their opinions on panels of opinionaters and from the field. Abby Phillip is another young journalist like Diamond who does opinion, not reporting.

‘Woman on Fire: Passion, Liberty, and Reason’: Talking To Buck Johnson

Ilana Mercer, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Reason, Republicans, Technology

My wide-ranging conversation with the fun and fierce Buck Johnson of the “Death To Tyrants” Podcast has been published:

Woman on Fire: Passion, Liberty, and Reason, with Ilana Mercer”:

My guest this week is the wonderful paleo-libertarian writer, thinker, and author, Ilana Mercer. Ilana is the author of several great books including “Into the Cannibals Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa”. She is here to discuss a multitude of topics with me ranging from: Paleo-libertariansism, Conservative Inc, mainstream libertarianism, her books, Donald Trump, and even some wonderful advice for my listeners. Many outlets are afraid to publish her work, including many libertarian and paleo-conservative outlets! This makes me love her even more, and as always, I welcome controversial guests who aren’t afraid to break from the mainstream and approved talking points. Ilana is a wonderful writer, a sweet person, and a great interview. I think you will enjoy this. Subscribe to Ilana’s Youtube here: Follow her and contact her on Twitter: Like her FB page here: Visit and connect with her here.

The “sweet person” designation, from one as kind-hearted and courageous as Buck: Those are the impressions one values most—just as when Erik Rush mentioned “good friend” before all else. Those personal touches that come from a place of care, kindness and appreciation are the things that mean the most in this impersonal world. A cliched sentiment, perhaps, but heartfelt.   

*****
I never listen to myself. If I did, I would not give interviews. However, I recall this error made:

I likened the profit-motive structure in many a Deep Tech organization to that of a petro-state.

Billions flow, top down, from a Sheik-dominated org to his political fiefdoms. I erred in naming my example. I meant to point, as an example, to Microsoft’s Kin phone project (which was well-covered and critiqued in the financial press), and not the Kinect.

For the rest, do please send me any questions you have about the broadcast via the Comments Section to this blog post.

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