Elsewhere (125)
Tim Worstall reads The Lancet, where socialism trumps reality:
Lifespans are still getting longer, communicable disease continues to reduce, age adjusted cancer rates are falling: there’s simply no evidence at all that the health of the population is declining. So, given that we’ve not got any sign whatsoever of declining health, it’s very difficult indeed to say that increasing inequality is causing something that isn’t happening.
And again here. When supposedly learned people talk unironically about “social justice,” a good mental response is “yellow alert.”
Some random thoughts from Thomas Sowell:
In Thomas Piketty’s highly-praised new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he asserts that the top tax rate under President Herbert Hoover was 25 percent. But Internal Revenue Service records show that it was 63 percent in 1932. If Piketty can’t even get his facts straight, why should his grandiose plans for confiscatory global taxation be taken seriously?
And via D in the comments, Aurelius marvels at the wonders of modern academia. Specifically, the winning oratory in the Cross Examination Debate Association’s national championship. I implore you to watch the video of highlights. It’s a thing to behold, serving as both a bold new standard for eloquent persuasion and a measure of the education these young ladies have received. Here’s a very brief transcript:
Uh, man’s sole “jabringing” object disfigure religion trauma and nubs, uh, the, inside the trauma of representation that turns into the black child devouring and identifying with the stories and into the white culture brought up, uh, de de de de de, dink, and add subjectively like a white man, the black man!
Go Team Dada. Embrace the jive.
As always, feel free to share your own links and snippets below.
The guy with the dreadlocks and tie die African style shirt was doing a a straight up rip off of Saul Williams’s lyrics in the movie called Slam.
Saul Williams is excellent in it, his lyrical skill is unimpeachable and his lyrics make perfect sense in the context of the cycle of crime in the ghetto and against the backdrop of the prison yard.
But I fail to see how “Sha-clack clack, nigga dies, uh, white man……., nigga uh” has any relevance to a debate about foreign policy against the backdrop of a university campus.
This is the culmination of a dogma whereby People of Colour must be respectfully listened to and believed no matter what and having ghetto credentials gives one authenticity and unearned admiration.
Tim Worstall mulls the latest thrilling idea…
The only way I can think of of calming house prices down a bit, aside from building more houses, is to cap and gradually reduce Housing Benefit. If buy-to-let landlords are no longer guaranteed quite such a high rate of return, they won’t be prepared to spend as much to buy.
Uh, says that the the the way status co works is through, uh, whiteness allowing, uh, forcing other bodies to tell, uh, nearations of whiteness in, uh, the violences that whiteness does me, uh, say that that is the link that we will go for!
The violences that whiteness does me. Jesus wept.
This may be old, but it never fades: seeing the TV presenter/interviewer being *thrilled* by the ‘all-black’ success. Would she have been as thrilled by an ‘all-white’ success?
No, it’s okay. I know the answer.
Tim Worstall mulls the latest thrilling idea from the New Economics Foundation.
Naturally, there’s a commenter, (appropriately) calling himself “blarg”, who seems to be trying to “up the ante”…
Above someone speculated whether the topic of debate was even relevant. The topic could have been the nationalization of the railways and their verbiage would have still been.
Uh, man’s sole “jabringing” object disfigure religion trauma and nubs, uh, the, inside the trauma of representation that turns into the black child devouring and identifying with the stories and into the white culture brought up, uh, de de de de de, dink, and add subjectively like a white man, the black man!
I have a few well educated black friends who make amazing music but they are completely obsessed by race. Many of their stage names feature the words “Afro”, “Blacq” “Black” “Nubian” etc
I knew many of them before the internet and love their music. They were always doing something positive and creative. Never playing up to the gangsta stereotype. Unfortunately the internet and social media has highlighted to me that they subscribe to a different kind of black stereotype. The “black consciousness” Afrocentrist much like the students in the CEDA “debates”
It’s like a religion whereby black people are gods and white people are devils.
I can only assume this was prevalent before the internet, just not broadcast to the masses via social media.
Read any of my friends Facebook feeds and there isn’t a day that goes by where a celebration of a black “Saint” like MLK or Malcolm X isn’t going on. Interspersed between the celebrations of black pride and black heroes there is a constant stream of outrages (real or imagined) doing the rounds. It is non stop.
Mandela dies so it’s pious Mandela worship 24/7. Just as that dies down Melissa Alexander is sentenced and social media lights up with more claims of racism and Zimmerman hatred. Then it’s ‘Micheal Dunn is an evil racist’ day, followed by ‘Maya Angelou memorial month’, then ‘stop & frisk opposition week’, hot on the heels of ‘prison is the new slavery awareness fortnight’ and ‘Donald Sterling is scum hour’
And on a quiet day when no black saint had died and there were no injustices to decry I found this doing the rounds along with long threads of anger and outrage at the terrible injustice of whitey and the West.
http://i775.photobucket.com/albums/yy37/lukeychat/10313538_10154089869555262_6080853031948853168_n_zps9334163d.jpg
Surely having victimology and racial obsession at the core of ones identity is not only unhealthy it is quite likely to be a self fulfilling prophesy. Universities should be steering people away from such a divisive world view. Unfortunately in the name of tolerance, anti racism and diversity it seems this mindset is being actively promoted and taught.
Unfortunately in the name of tolerance, anti racism and diversity it seems this mindset is being actively promoted and taught
Superb comment & correct conclusion, I think.
As you say, we begin from noble-sounding phrases. ‘Anti-racism’ is something people tend to agree on, though what exactly racism is should be given more thought, and some people do behave as though racism itself were the worst of all evils, rather than murders or beatings that can sometimes be the result of it.
‘Tolerance’ I like the sound of. ‘Diversity’, ‘multiculturalism’ etc are all a bit more obviously complex.
There are a bunch of progressive whites from London & Oxford who uphold these values and rather patronise anyone from elsewhere in the UK who thinks otherwise.
But a strong flavour of what they espouse seems to be not so much ‘multiculturalism’ as a rejection of our own shared culture. There is encouragement of not only other people’s cultures, but also – I think – their intolerance.
Guardian readers writers are scathing about any white persons “phobia” of other cultures, but do seem to want us to be understanding about the sources of terrorism. They ignore or exculpate the prejudice and hatred of others towards whites, and shake their heads at those of us who condemn it.
I think there is a rather simple political impulse in these progressive types “understand others, blame ourselves”. Thus they compete with each other to show their righteousness.
Mildly patriotic people from other parts of the country then take one look at the Guardian (where we see the end result of all the above) and wonder what’s going on…
Henry,
The way such people justify their apparent self-loathing is, as I’m sure you’re aware, by ignorant, ahistorical obsession over Empire and the occasional attrocity that occurred as a result. If you are Spanish or Belgian this ‘guilt’ might be a little more understandable but with the Angloshere still dominating every region of the World economically and scant evidence of real ethnic cleansing or any other attempt to blot out ethnic culture (with the possible exception of the Welsh) I, for one find it pretty hard to understand the guilt even without reference to class (my Welsh coal-mining ancestry didn’t see much benefit from Empire or slaving aside from their love of tea).
In order to maintain this fiction that Western Empire building powers were uniquely awful and worthy of endless abject apology you have to literally ignore most of history. You have to imagine that the Hun, the Greeks, the Persians the Mongols and especially the Moors-Saracens-Mohammodans were all simple peace-loving farmers until the British invented the concept of Empire. Texts like this should be essential reading to correct this mal-function in reasoning.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/the_greatest_murder_machine_in_history.html#.U4mDhJYczfU.blogger
“…When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty…”
Henry and Steve,
See also Andrew Bostom’s encyclopaedic (and quite excellent) The Legacy of Jihad.
As I sit reading these comments, I am being entertained — purely in a vibrant way, of course — by the sound of a belching contest next door by adult males at a kid’s birthday party. Apparently we have a winner, I have just heard. Given there is no alcohol being served, I presume this is a cultural thing and not just bad digestion.
Still, mustn’t complain. To do so would be labelled as a belchophobe, or something.