Turf War

it is a bit disturbing to hear people gleeful about stick man’s violence
Why is physically resisting violent masked hoodlums “disturbing”? If there was a genuine fear of their targets fighting back, I image even the Black Bloc would think twice.

I’m fine with self defense. I’m disturbed by the yell of “punch a nazi!” being echoed with a gleeful yell of “punch a commie!” with little concern of whether it is in self defense.

I have a mischievous fantasy of catching flies with honey instead of vinegar:
Issue a campus announcement that the students who rioted and drove off Murray will be receiving a unique award/degree/etc for special accomplishments in social work. Prepare big ceremony, schedule date, invite audience, convince as many as possible of the rioters to register themselves in the hope of being fawned over some more.
When the day comes, have them line up on podium to receive their degrees, and then the announcer instead says “Today, you are receiving dishonorary degrees in uncivilized savagery. Some of you were brutes and thugs who used violence to crush dissent, with collateral damage, with lies and slander and deliberate perseverance in persecution; others of you, since we pointedly didn’t check actual riot participation when letting you register your name for this, are frauds so greatly aspire to being thugs that you lied about having committed thuggery because you think it’s glorious. I don’t know and I don’t care who’s who; both are detestable. Take your dishonorary degrees and get out, you’re all graduated-cum-expelled.”
Wishful thinking aside, it seems the best practical thing to do with Middlebury might be let it fail. Advise people to GTFO, stop being an enabler for Red Guards.

“…a group of unidentified assailants mobbed the speaker, and one of our faculty members was seriously injured. In view of these unacceptable acts, we have produced this document stating core principles that seem to us unassailable…”

Ha ha!
At one level, this is a bit of a cheap shot at the Middlebury faculty’s poor choice of language that half contradicts itself.
But at another level, I think the muddled language reflects a serious problem of fuzzy thinking, magical thinking, wishful thinking, not sure what to call it, around a confusion of assertion and reality, that one can sensibly accept something while saying “unacceptable!” and think the statement is of value. What is “unacceptable!” supposed to do to people who have already shown themselves willing to assault innocent seniors? What kind of nonsense is it do say “You can’t do this!” when this is already being done, has been done, repeatedly?
On the good side: Middlebury, Police to Investigate Violent Protest of Murray Lecture

Middlebury College has begun an independent investigation into what happened during — and after — an attempted lecture by controversial author Charles Murray, the school president said Monday.
The Middlebury Police Department will also begin an investigation into a confrontation that happened after the lecture, as Murray left the campus hall, Laurie Patton said in a statement. A school official previously said Professor Allison Stanger was injured while protecting Murray from a “mob” that descended on them as they tried to leave Thursday evening.
(more…)

And here’s yet another example of a journalist being wildly dishonest about the contents of The Bell Curve.

And note, downthread, the sociology lecturer who takes passionate umbrage against even acknowledging the data and entertaining the possibility, however tentatively, of some genetic role. He instantly dismisses the data itself, and by extension decades of testing in dozens of ways in every inhabited continent, as “fabricated” to “justify Nazi eugenics.” On Facebook, the sociologist describes himself as interested in “social justice.” And so, presumably, reality must only be acknowledged when it suits his personal preferences.

Col. Milquetoast, my glee was confined to the surgical grace with which Based Stick Man picked off a black blochead as the latter ran towards one of his fellows with his fist cocked. I wouldn’t necessarily relish the prospect of volunteer security details armed and trained to ensure the safety of conservative speakers. Speakers, for God’s sake. But the fact remains that conventional arrangements with the campus and the city are not doing the job, in Middlebury or anywhere else.

We have got to do better by those who feel and are marginalized. Our 230-year constitutional democracy depends on it, especially when our current President is blind to the evils he has unleashed.
She’s obviously been affected by that blow to the head. Leftists use violence and the threat of violence to silence anyone who might disagree with them and they’re the ones who feel marginalised? Un-be-frickin’-lievable.

Well-known race agitator Van Jones:
Who, oddly enough, has been criticizing the campus rioting and praising Trump’s speech.
This is the guy who famously enjoined his fellow radicals to drop the radical pose to achieve the radical ends. IOW, wear a suit, hide the tats, lose the street accent, and infiltrate the ranks of “respectability” so that you can work the levers from THERE.
Our 230-year constitutional democracy depends on it, especially when our current President is blind to the evils he has unleashed.
The plot thins.

…they’re the ones who feel marginalised?
Being a pathological narcissist/sociopath/psychopath is alienating.
This is the guy who famously enjoined his fellow radicals to drop the radical pose to achieve the radical ends.
Van Jones from what I’ve gathered is a real Communist, not just a useful idiot.

“As I’ve been pointing out elsewhere, it is up to the anti-violence left (yes, they exist, Dr. Stanger among them) to get in the way of the pro-violence left”
Once you have eliminated the left that is violent, the left that tacitly supports violence, the left that defames and demonizes and so manufactures a culture of extreme intolerance, well, you don’t have much left…left.

To their enormous credit, two professors and numerous undersigners at Midd have produced a laudable statement of principle that was just published in the WSJ. Among the points made: “Exposure to controversial points of view does not constitute violence.”

Hal | March 07, 2017 at 03:25
Which summarizes, more or less, with

I am Conservative.
I support and refine that which works, and I waste no time in ideology. The only constant is change. I watch all parts and occurrences all the time so that I may continually project into the future and look into the past, learn for myself before events develop, learn what may go wrong, learn what must be prepared for.

Considering the works linked from your posts, Hal, with respect I’m going to take some exception to the points offered. Terms first:
The first is that the functional original, structural right – perhaps best, the “classical liberal” of the US Constitution and what I understand is British common law, both going back for reference to the Magna Carta – is not identified by the fairly monolithic social-cultural-political bloc of popular “rightists” as I use the term, wherein s/he, the classical liberal, subscribes to the mostly cultural “values” like resisting homosexuality. Likewise, the Republican bloc – the frequently progressive rightist – is not nearly universally identified by that or similar issues. S/he’s not because s/he doesn’t grasp so much as react, making him a political tool most useful at keeping the culture war rolling along.
I won’t address all the exceptions in the anti-left movement; I’m referring to either original, structural, constitutional “conservatives” and the popular rightist, arguably a bigger problem for liberty than the left itself.
Either way, neither the classical liberal – the structural constitutionalist – or, with time, the rightist Republican find their identity in what I’d call retail issues. The former realizes they’re folly on their face and the latter is a trend in the wind who spends most of his time shrieking against a projected left, as if to “fight” the shrieking left and her projections and moral Satans.
For example, when that miserable hive of misfits, Occupy, said the Corporate State had to go, immediately Republican rightists went predictably ape defending it as the pinnacle of both free, conservative commerce – that free markets myth it’s always on about – and as the sum of his superior cultural standing, the standing and performance he thought, completely wrongly, kept him in beer and suburbia when all the rest of the world was populated by stinking socialists and/or third-worlders whose inferiority was borne out in their lifestyles of choice, naturally.
Then, while rightists may characteristically adopt some of your author’s view of them, and while my complaint against rightists is their bloc-like stupidity, the core complaint isn’t what they do as much as what they do not do. They do not comprehend what the real issues are. In fact, they are typically quite progressive in the sorts of things Smart Republicans Who Think About Things fancy themselves experts on, the federal alphabet soup list of which is highly statist. There is a vast sea of collectivism they never even mention.
Worse, there is a vast sea of collectivism they’ve revised and now defend as conservative.
These unreformable statists comprise the entire popular rightist establishment, and its tribe includes all of the rightist talkers and bloggers I’ve ever. To get to identifying real structural instability and the real assaults on original constitutional structuralism you have to go to the fringes. And, as any self-respecting rightist will loudly tell you, we can’t be having any of those mealy libertarians in here, what with their weak foreign policy and their free fire departments and their getting stoned all the time.
Yes you’re right. That’s projection too. And this is about the tone of “conservative” pushback these days.
Lastly and as you’d now gather, true conservatism is not for or about adopting change, whatever your author means by it. If your author fancies himself a conservative conserving things, he’ll have to first identify what’s already changed we would be wise to reform. He’s not the practical, free-thinker of note without grasping the philosophical underpinnings. That then takes us back to what the rightist refuses to learn to identify, that sea of collective policy that by now has become both positive feedback and a runaway system, big hunks of it the very definition of Americanism to rightists.
This blog’s usual emphasis and general content aside – this is all off-topic – without structural reform there are no conservatives. There is no adopting or changing to fit sea change like this because there’s nothing to conserve except principle. And without understanding what each block is in this gigantic Jenga tower of State, you cannot deconstruct it.
My tip is this: Those blocks are almost none of the things rightists are on about. At the least, I’ve never yet found a rightist – and it’s all rightists as far as the putative, ostensible right goes by now – who has listed them, much less how each conflict a philosophy of the sustainable social, cultural organization.
You can’t reform what you refuse to see.

Oh, my, that does rather confuse things, now doesn’t it.
No. It doesn’t.
Hal, I’m not going to parse all that – and I’m not going to defend against cartoons of noble-class, capital-letter Classical Liberals in their quaint historical Enlightenment sense either – but I can say you confuse what I’d hoped was clearer. The point is that it’s blindingly self-evident, after all.
No, I didn’t identify two camps of rightists. The single, rightist bloc is to conservatism what a progressive/leftist is to liberalism: a lie to the purported cause.
A classical liberal, then, isn’t a historical affectation. He’s a constitutionalist, an originalist, a structuralist.
Since hordes of Republicans are completely upside down per constitutional conservatism – let’s join those terms to avoid further confusion – they’re rightists. They’re cultural “conservatives” whose main aim, judged from their noise, is yelling back at leftists.
No matter how they self-identify that’s not conservatism, that’s codependency.
So. Rightists are, by their effect, statist progressives who argue endlessly and codependently with leftists, liberals, progressives and so on, while themselves booking no dissent on the acres of statist policy they’ve adopted, co-opted, and, in their minds, made all but essential to their weird kind of Big State patriotism.
Now I realize you find this all entertaining and you prefer to excerpt long blocks from elsewhere and link to elsewhere but in the case of the latter your man missed the point rather completely. This is because he didn’t address the rightist statist either specifically or as a phenomenon. He’d have to start with a standard, not a narrowed-down theory, and list where it was abused and by whom, specifically.
Until the ostensible right realizes it’s laundry list of Good Socialisms – or collectivisms or however you want to define that intractable State of theirs – are Socialism, typically of progressive roots, there we are. Screwed.
And we are thoroughly screwed. The rightist is by now far more of a hazard than the leftist. Because the rightist bloc – the semi-official GOP-style Right – refuses to reform anything the left had originally ginned up, finding instead that it’s perfectly palatable when it’s managed by another kind of central momentum, if managed is the right word. For them it is but a more acute view finds the word paradoxical for what wrongly claims to be structurally conservative.
Of course the other alternative is to gawk and stare at the guy pointing this out, mentally dressing him in a nice tri-corner hat, delicately-heeled shoes, and a row of shiny brass buttons, the silly old-fashioned man who has no context in these, our serious, modern, and thoroughly sophisticated times. Because rightists have their standards and there’s nothing better than the easier, cheapest standard in the quiver.

Oh, my, that does rather confuse things, now doesn’t it.
No. It doesn’t.
Lessee . . . Rightists . . . argue endlessly and codependently with leftists, liberals, progressives and so on, . . . whose main aim, judged from their noise, is yelling back at leftists.
No matter how they self-identify that’s not conservatism, that’s codependency.
Cool, got it! You state that there are right wing liberals—or rightists–screaming at left wing liberals—or leftists, who scream back, etc, etc. All exactly as has been noted, the right pole vs left pole, the right and left wing extremes of the political spectrum, with the actual conservative in between, with the conservative continually getting lumped into the left wing by the right wing, getting lumped into the right wing by the left wing.
And then you proclaim that there we are. Screwed.
And we are thoroughly screwed. The rightist is by now far more of a hazard than the leftist. Because the rightist bloc – the semi-official GOP-style Right – refuses to reform anything the left had originally ginned up . . .
Ok, Given that you are stating We are rather than pointing at the right wing liberals and stating They are, in that case can you finally tell us what concrete, identifiable examples are the problem or problems or are causing these problems? Of those right wing liberals, the rightists, you state that all that screaming is about . . . . . acres of statist policy they’ve adopted, co-opted, and, in their minds, made all but essential to their weird kind of Big State patriotism . . . laundry list of Good Socialisms – or collectivisms or however you want to define that intractable State of theirs – . . . Socialism . . .
In such usage, all those are merely labels. Only labels, not descriptions. It’s all very nice for you to keep chanting Darmok!! Darmok!! Darmok!!, but if no one else has any idea what that means, all that’s left is a so-so Star Trek episode . . . If you can’t state concrete examples—as are stated in Capitalism . . . , then all you are doing is reciting the right wing version of critical theory. “Because patriarchy” for the left pole, “because socialism” for the right pole.
And because all this is taking place across a spectrum, and there is no actual identifiable left or right pole, the conservative will remain the leader in the middle, continuing to make a living and get the bills paid when on the individual scale, and when on the large scale, continuing to insist on breathable air and drinkable water, having buildings that aren’t death traps, having food that can be trusted from one side to the country to the other, having roads that can be used from one side of the country to the other, all of this requiring practice and reality instead of mere ideology, large scale, governmental organization and operation, because that is how everything gets done and keeps getting done.

If you can’t state concrete examples … then all you are doing is reciting the right wing version of critical theory. “Because patriarchy” for the left pole, “because socialism” for the right pole.
No. You’re templating things by one incomplete theory, near as I can tell. These “concrete examples” are precisely what the rightist – and plenty of conservatives, apparently – cannot identify and won’t brook being hung on, for it is the right – however you identify it – that diligently maintains these progressive edifices.
We identify the rightist by this same phenomenon: The rightist is a progressive. Deeply, immovably so. The rightist loves Good Socialism and worse.
Will I identify these progressive measures? But why? They’d be argued – with rightists – over and over and unless this new, ostensible “conservative” figures them out for himself, they only impact on the surface.
I also can’t find a reason to fall for the sales-pitch style of lobbying the completely obvious toward the righteous rightist using the same method that makes no dent on a leftist. It’s one and the same.
And because all this is taking place across a spectrum, and there is no actual identifiable left or right pole, the conservative will remain the leader in the middle [performing all sorts of short term heroism].
Also no. He’s not a leader, he’s as likely an impeder. The “conservative” – by your definition – has no effect against the parabolic effects of a system he, through sloth, didn’t bother preventing moving in such curves. You don’t save this by roads or food or construction. They exist in that envelope. That is not, in the fuller perspective, how everything gets done and keeps getting done.

So apparently what you are stating is that there can not be a recitation of facts so that the facts and actual occurrences can be discussed and assessed. Instead, these rather undefined claims of yours . . . which are apparently to be deferred to, just because, and regardless of evidence and coherence, both of which your right wing liberal practically dismisses in favour of muh feels.
Hal, my good man, that’s a fallacy. That’s a double fallacy twice now. Your personal incredulity – and worse – somehow stems from my not providing the evidence you – therefore or in spite of – shall not see.
Somewhere over the horizon comes a vast, destroying storm. One of the Big Ones, Plains-sweepers. I regard history and nature, mention it and its consequences, and other – let’s call them “conservatives” – deride me until I prove this historical, definite, and not-uncommonly denied thing.
When I said I wasn’t going to engage the hopeless fiction that a reasonable man 1) owes a less sensible man an explanation, or 2) that polite deference is anything other than the simple fact that he – as you’ve just now tacitly proved twice – wouldn’t accept it graciously anyway. The last time a storm like this blew in they didn’t listen either.
That’s the point, Hal. Twice it’s been the point and once before it was the reason to toss it in here in the first place. It’s not just the City Folk – the left – doing the denyin’.
There is no requirement in the context of addressing a known dysfunction of political viewpoint to “discuss and assess” normalcy. Or gathering storms or institutional decay or even their systemic collapse. Why would we when we already knows what it is and how it came to pass and how resistant its authors, patrons, and employees are to seeing it?
Things fall down. History repeats. None of this is either hidden or mysterious, and typically, after it burns it’s folded into a new way, one of which – a particularly excellent version thereof – once informed this particular structure.
The reaction proves the point and condition.
Give me a reason why willful ignorance of a thing constitutes a duty and obligation to submit obvious evidence of entirely predictable hail and hellfire over the horizon to such assessment?
(I could say I simply don’t give a shit but then that’d be rude, wouldn’t it.)
Earlier I rejected codependency as that thing the simple, ignorant, largely cultural, putative right does whenever the dysfunctional left hangs it all up in the air (all in the space of a handful of decades during which the right has precisely zero formative victories to its credit.) That’s a hint. That was a hint a handful of posts ago. I think you can see where this all goes, my friend Hal.
Although,
The Interstate Highway System started up in 1916, and just one result has been that . . . As of 2013, about one-quarter of all vehicle miles driven in the country use the Interstate system.
So you claim that over a century of good works that continue to achieve benefit for everyone are “short term” and are “heroism”.
Got it.
Therefore, if those piss you off, you must have been totally incandescently livid when you first read about Gutenberg and creating a printing press back in 1439.
And of course you were already enraged because someone had already told you about the Romans building the aqueducts.
To what must be my endless, cowering chagrin I just couldn’t foresee it going there. But let me thank you not just for those special insights but for whatever generous special insights lurk at your links as well. Thank you so very much for them all. Hal.
Let me close the chapter for us. It’s true, folks. All who disagree with Hal’s Narrow Trajectory really are enraged, – I think the term was – cretinous leftist assholes, and unconservative.
See? Proof.

Wee pause here to clean up Micro’s italics cascade . . .
There, that’s better.
Are we still arguing here?
Nah. We were finally getting Ten to stand for not really having anything to stand for—the inevitable result of frantically trying to position ‘imself as the right pole . . . where as noted elsewhere, there never can be a right or left pole . . .
. . . his repeated posting of the same manifesto and same . . . basic ease of not having to go dancing all over the landscape in an ever failing attempt to outdo the next extremist to come along . . .

After having “time to reflect,” Middlebury’s Professor Allison Stanger now feels obliged to make excuses for the thugs who assaulted her.