Eyescapes. 

By Rankin. Via Tim239.

A few weeks ago, Georges and I were discussing Margaret Thatcher’s often-taken-out-of-context “society” quote and the idea of the nation state as a marker of solidarity. Georges was struck by,

How much people seem to need larger forms of affiliation than self and family and immediate social circle.

To which I replied,

Well, indeed, and some more than others. But I don’t see why that should necessarily conflict with Thatcher’s statement, or with her broader outlook, or with a Conservative outlook generally. And the people who most vehemently disdain national identity and national pride – those “larger forms of affiliation” – tend to be on the left of the political spectrum. Which strikes me as counter-productive.

In today’s Observer, David Goodhart elaborates on a similar theme and offers reasons why such disdain is counter-productive.

Most of today’s cabinet were students in the 1970s and 1980s. If their student union had been debating the motion “The nation-state is a bloodstained anachronism”, most of them would probably have voted for it. And why not? I was there too and we were growing up in the shadow of nationalism’s 20th-century horrors… People on the left… were pro-mass immigration – among other things it added colour to the staid stoicism of Anglo-Saxon life. Meanwhile, a broader political world view emerged – there was no common culture in Britain, but, rather, a multicultural ethnic rainbow…

The fact is that the liberal baby-boomers were too insouciant about the nation-state and feelings of mutual obligation and belonging. Events, and voters’ responses to them, forced them to adjust. In Britain, those events included the asylum crisis in the late 1990s, the unprecedented increase in legal immigration, the unexpected East European surge after May 2004, the 7 July London attacks and, most important, the hostility of public opinion to mass immigration amid anxieties about public services and rapidly changing communities.

This does not mean that the average British citizen has become more prejudiced, though the far right gets more votes than ever. The principle of anti-discrimination is now more widely practised than ever… and the average Briton is more comfortable with difference – consider the rise of interracial marriage. But the liberal baby-boomers have come to grasp that a belief in universal moral equality does not mean that we have the same obligations to all humans – we do not consider our families to be on a different moral plane, yet would not hesitate to put their interests first. Until a few decades ago, the basis of national ‘specialness’ would have been ethnicity – shared ancestry, history, sacrifice. In multi-ethnic and multiracial societies, the basis of specialness is citizenship itself.

The justification for giving priority to the interests of fellow citizens boils down to a pragmatic claim about the value of the nation-state. Without fellow-citizen favouritism, the nation-state ceases to have much meaning. And most of the things that liberals desire – democracy, redistribution, welfare states, human rights – only work when one can assume the shared norms and solidarities of national communities.

Given the above, one might wonder how it is much of the left came to embrace dogmatic self-loathing and a pretentious disdain of territory. As when Joseph Harker, the Guardian’s deputy comment editor, repeatedly claimed “all white people are racist,” before identifying any fluttering of national identity as suspicious and, almost by default, a sign of xenophobia. When such views appear in the mainstream organ of the British left, voiced by a member of its own editorial staff, this isn’t exactly a cause for optimism. Nor is it encouraging to discover that even the most positive expressions of shared national identity can meet with official censure and threats of punishment. As, for instance, when Pendle council reprimanded Matthew Carter, a black dustman born in Barbados, for wearing a St George’s Cross bandana to keep his dreadlocks out of the way:

Ian McInery, the operational services manager for Pendle council, defended the decision to discipline Mr Carter. He said: “We have made it clear to staff that they are not allowed to put stickers or flags on bin wagons or wear clothing which shows support for a particular team, group or country… It’s just a common-sense approach that we are sticking to.”

One also has to wonder if viewing Mr Carter’s choice of headgear as a sign of xenophobic atavism, or as likely to be perceived as such, is what multicultural theorists really had in mind. And does this affected distaste for national symbols suggest progress, or its opposite?

I gather some of you are fans of the retooled Battlestar Galactica, which remains one of the more intelligent and compelling science fiction series. Given the issues raised during the last three seasons and their real world resonance, law professors Daniel Solove, Deven Desai and David Hoffman have taken an interest and interviewed BSG’s creators, Ronald D Moore and David Eick.

Part 1 deals with the trials and legal systems of the human survivors. Part 1-B explores the depicted use of torture. Parts 2 and 3, on the series’ treatment of politics, cylons and religion, will follow shortly.

Those of you unfamiliar with BSG can watch the episode 33 below.

Link: sevenload.com

(h/t, Volokh.)

Peter Callesen’s paper cuts. Each one made from a single sheet. (h/t, Dr Westerhaus.) // The Agbar Tower, Barcelona. More. // Zoudov. A Cold War thriller. (h/t, Coudal.) // 9 improbable weapons of war. Pigeons, rats, unspeakable lust. // Robo-fawn. // Robo-ferret. // Robot water strider. // Advanced prosthetic arm. // Deluxe finger painting. // Cutest. Thing. Ever. // A feline wake-up call. Scroll down. (h/t, Andy.) // Marvelous aquariums. (h/t, Things.) // The relative sizes of stars. Let it play. (h/t, Stephen Hicks.) // Methane detected on world 63 light years from Earth. // Is the Earth flat? A debate ensues. (h/t, Mick  Hartley.) // The People’s Quiz. Who said what. // Knowing what’s best for poor people. // Madsen Pirie on the pursuit of happiness. // Oliver Kamm on CND. // Fabian Tassano on Cornelia Parker’s politics-as-art. // Exploding flower arrangements. Frozen with liquid nitrogen, then shot. // Self-healing rubber. // Bubble gum drum machine. // Bubble gum alley. // Bubble gum sculptures. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s the Ohio Express.

Wine glasses, played well. Things get clever about one minute in.

(Via Centripetal Notion.) 

Related: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy played on a glass harmonica or hydrocrystalophone. The Glass Duo may also entertain. Or enliven your soirée with the skills of Miss Gloria Parker.

During Evan Coyne Maloney’s 90-minute documentary, Indoctrinate U, the historian Daniel Pipes shares his impression of the modern American university: “It’s like joining a church; you have to be a believer. You have to have the right set of views.” The nature of those views and how they’re enforced is ably documented, as example after example prompts both hilarity and alarm. During the opening titles, Professor David Clemens of Monterey Peninsula College reads out a directive regarding new course proposals: “Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class and gender issues.” We learn that this directive isn’t confined to courses in, say, sociology or politics, but is expected of all subjects, including mathematics and ornamental horticulture. Failure to comply is not a trivial matter and, as Clemens later points out, “They’re quite ruthless about their desire for a kinder, gentler world.”

Maloney’s film begins with the campus free speech activism of the 1960s and 70s, in which his own parents took part, before highlighting how dramatically those principles have now been discarded, even upended, in many of the same universities. We see conservative speakers being shouted down, intimidated and howled off stage, unable even to start an exchange of ideas. We hear students’ accounts of incongruous political sermons being shoehorned onto lessons. (“I’ve been learning in geography class that gender is socially constructed.”) We also see a procession of academics voicing their dismay at the belligerent orthodoxy of campus politics. One psychology professor, Laura Freberg, recounts being told, “We never would have hired you if we knew you were a Republican.”

Freberg’s story is among the film’s more disturbing revelations, in that it shows how the most innocuous of details can identify someone as incompatible with orthodoxy and a target for punishment. Freberg explains how despite her excellent performance she was labelled a “problem” by her colleagues and subjected to a campaign of harassment until finally, and successfully, she sought legal remedy. Freberg’s students later admitted they’d known she was a “closet Republican” precisely because she didn’t use the classroom to air her political views.

Despite Maloney’s own right-of-centre leanings, Indoctrinate U is surprisingly non-party political and, as FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff explains, many mainstream Democrats could well be shocked by how a supposed marketplace of ideas has become so intolerant and congealed. Indeed, one wonders how many liberal parents would regard Bucknell’s Professor Geoff Schneider, who confidently asserts, “A lot of our students are unconsciously racist”, and who defines as harassment “anything that offends.” Or Professor Noel Ignatiev of the Massachusetts School of Art, who echoes the sentiments of Dr Shakti Butler and Peggy McIntosh, and says, “My concern is doing away with whiteness. Whiteness is a form of racial oppression… Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” (Schneider and Ignatiev are, of course, both white.) At Tufts and Brown universities we see how a fixation with identity politics and leftwing grievance theatre has resulted in racially segregated student orientations. Elsewhere, students are offered racially segregated housing, even segregated graduation ceremonies, and all in the name of multicultural “diversity”.

Maloney also highlights the spread of “speech codes” on hundreds of campuses, the particulars of which include, at Brown, the “banning of verbal behaviour” that “produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement.” The University of Connecticut prohibits “inappropriately directed laughter”, while other campuses, including Colby College, have outlawed any speech deemed to result in a loss of self-esteem. Also documented are the absurd and sinister travails of several students, among them Steve Hinkle, whose flyer – advertising a speech by a black conservative author and quoting the title of his book – led to police involvement, lengthy entanglement in campus judicial proceedings and suggestions that he should seek psychological “counselling”.

Other extraordinary moments include San Francisco State University’s vehemently “pacifist” anti-military protests; the banning of patriotic expressions and symbols, including the American flag and the pledge of allegiance; and a satirical “affirmative action bake sale”, with cupcakes sold at different prices according to a person’s colour. (Needless to say, this culinary satire isn’t received terribly well and threats of arrest ensue.) 

A recurrent and revealing theme is just how readily these PC principles can be abandoned if the target is deemed politically deviant. Sukhmani Singh Khalsa, a conservative Sikh student critical of liberal bias, was unwittingly sent an email from the University of Tennessee’s Issues Committee, a student group responsible for inviting speakers to campus. Justin Rubenstein, an Issues Committee member, referred to Khalsa in less than edifying terms: “If you see one of those ragheads, shoot him right in the fucking face.” The University of Tennessee saw fit not to discipline Rubenstein or remove him from the committee. Yet when students at that same university arrived at an off-campus Halloween party dressed as the Jackson Five and complete with “black” makeup, this attention to detail resulted in the entire fraternity being suspended. 

Maloney’s attempts to raise these concerns with university administrators are, alas, unsuccessful, and of course symbolic. Invariably polite and decidedly unthreatening, our hero nonetheless finds himself rebuffed, then escorted off campus by burly security guards. Maloney’s alma mater, Bucknell, proves no more accommodating. (Watching these encounters almost becomes a game – guessing exactly how little time will pass before spotting the Stare of Death™ and hearing the administrator say, “Call the campus police.”) Some viewers may wonder if many faculty members are bewitched by the homogeneity of their insulated fiefdoms and are thus unaccustomed to their assumptions being challenged. Others may suspect that some of these educators are less naïve and all too happy to do in private what they cannot defend in public. Either way, a question arises for supporters of identity politics and pretentious sensitivity: What happens when the most oppressive “hegemony” in town is, in fact, your own? 

Those lucky enough to see Maloney’s film may differ in their views of exactly how this political lockstep became so pervasive and entrenched. Fixated by a Holy Trinity of race, class and gender, leftist ideologues have certainly played a pivotal role; as have squeamish administrators anxious to avoid controversy. Few, though, could deny that a serious problem exists. On the subject of an increasingly politicised classroom and the reluctance to voice unfashionable views, one student points out perhaps the greatest sin of all: “Education becomes a spectator sport.” Charming, alarming and not quite polished, Indoctrinate U is likely to amuse and enrage in more or less equal measure. If you can, see it. Then get angry. 

Watch the trailer here.

Buy the film as MPEG4 or Virtual DVD via the online store. 

Related. And. Also. Plus.

Today brings further confirmation that the Guardian’s moral compass is performing as normal, if not, alas, properly. Jakob Illeborg tells us,

Over the weekend numerous schools in Denmark have been set on fire and one completely burned down. Every night for almost a week the sky in Danish city centres has been lit up by burning cars and bonfires started in the middle of the high streets.

Indeed. For some pious souls, arson and death threats are very cheap currency. But first a detail. Note that the link chosen for the passage above is headlined, Cartoons Blamed for Danish Riots. If headlines are to be believed, the cause of the current riots is the publication of a cartoon drawn by a 73-year-old who is now forced to live in hiding in fear of his life, and the lives of his family. The cause is not, one notes, the individuals who chose to take part in those riots and burnings, and nor is it the absurd theological vanities that, for some, validate such behaviour. This strange causal manoeuvre is one that Mr Illeborg, like many others, has embraced with shameless enthusiasm. In his previous Guardian column, Illeborg argued that,

Once again the Danes could, with some justification, be seen as fire starters, even if all we were trying to do was to stand up for freedom of speech and democratic rights.

In case you missed that, here it is again.

the Danes could, with some justification, be seen as fire starters.

We’ve been here before, of course, and more than once. Last year, Newsweek ran an article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, accompanied by a sidebar with the extraordinary heading, A Bombthrower’s Life. As Christopher Hitchens remarked,

The subject of this absurd headline is a woman who has been threatened with horrific violence, by Muslims varying from moderate to extreme, ever since she was a little girl. She has more recently had to see a Dutch friend butchered in the street, been told that she is next, and now has to live with bodyguards in Washington, D.C. She has never used or advocated violence. Yet to whom does Newsweek refer as the “Bombthrower”? It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it.

Quite. But back to Mr Illeborg.

The fire starters are frustrated young Muslim men who claim that their action is sparked by the re-publication of one of the prophet cartoons –

Yes, that does seem to be the perpetrators most commonly stated motive.

although it probably has little to do with religion,

Oh.

and much to do with an entire generation of young migrants who have not been integrated into Danish society.

Well, when you think about it – and, please, let’s – that may well amount to much the same thing. Certainly the two aren’t easily disentangled. A more integrated Danish society would not, one hopes, be faced with an inassimilable minority of a minority trying to violently impose its superstitious vanities on others. That would, I think, be a plausible marker of an integrated Western society. Indeed, it was also a point of the original Jyllands Posten article, published some two years ago. However, Mr Illeborg is in too much of a rush to linger on such details.

Anti-Danish sentiment seems once again to be gathering pace both locally and around the Muslim world. On Friday 1,000 of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters were demonstrating in Copenhagen. In Gaza more than 5,000 protesters were on the streets and in Teheran the Danish ambassador was summoned to meet the government… The odd thing is that all this was very predictable from the moment the Danish press insisted on making a headstrong idealistic response to the murder threats towards a Danish cartoonist by immediately printing / reprinting the cartoon that depicts the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban…

Well, yes. But the predictable nature of the lunacy doesn’t address the issue of the lunacy itself, or its grotesque disproportion and coercive, non-reciprocal intent. It doesn’t address the issue of whether those complaining, or demanding, or setting fire to something, have any sane and legitimate reason to do so. This is quite an important point, and one that Mr Illeborg seems determined to avoid. And it’s somewhat odd for him to describe the publishers of a cartoon as “headstrong” for doing something which is perfectly legal, while avoiding such pejoratives when referring to the people actually breaking the law and burning down schools. 

The Danish editors say they are making a stand for freedom of speech and many readers of CiF in their response to my article felt that the action was both brave and justified. But if, as the current press rumours in Denmark would have it, the accusations against the three suspects are less than waterproof, the quick and firm response may come to look clumsy and silly at best. Most of us agree that the Danish newspapers have the right to print / reprint the cartoons, but they don’t have an obligation to do so.

One wonders, then, what kind of right one has – say, to publish an unflattering cartoon – if that right cannot be exercised for fear of riots, arson and death threats – and then of being blamed by Guardian columnists for the actions of those who actually did the rioting, burning and threatening. And, again, another fundamental point whistles by, unregistered. Whether or not the individuals arrested last week are ultimately found guilty, they are merely the latest suspects in a series of violent acts spanning decades and continents, and which are intended to intimidate and cow the free-thinking world – including, lest we forget, quite a few liberal Muslims.

Alas, no post today. I’m busy reviewing this. However, rest assured I am thinking about you.

I thought I’d highlight a few of the comments on Friday’s post about the Muhammad cartoons, partly because the discussions are sometimes overlooked, but chiefly because they highlight the remarkable unrealism of Faisal al Yafai’s Guardian piece, and many others like it.

Jason Bontrager set things rolling with this neat summary of al Yafai’s underlying assumption:

If [as al Yafai suggests] the cartoons caused the damage resulting from the various Muslim riots, then the Muslims, not being the cause themselves, can only be thought of as unconscious puppets whose actions are dictated by the decisions of non-Muslims thousands of miles away.

Brendan quoted a Swedish commenter on al Yafai’s article:

I predict that this will not be the last showing of the cartoons. The last showing will be the first one that no one reacts to.

Which brought to mind this comment from MediaWatchWatch:

These cartoons have become the equivalent of a naughty step for violent Muslim toonophobes. Like tantrum-prone toddlers, their behaviour is unacceptable, and if they continue to misbehave the cartoons will continue to be published far and wide. They do not like it, but they must sit on that naughty step and think about their actions until they understand the rules.

And Matt pointed out a rather pivotal fact somehow overlooked in al Yafai’s piece:

The cartoons were drawn and published because of previous acts of violence in the name of Islam.

Indeed. See, for instance, here. And the latest publication was an affirmation of solidarity and free speech in response to the arrest of several Muslims accused of plotting to kill the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard – one of a growing number of artists, authors and scholars now in hiding or under police protection.

It’s remarkable how readily these little details were overlooked by Mr al Yafai, and their omission highlights just how unrealistic the MoToons debate can be. To avoid printing the cartoons – or any public suggestion that Islam is anything other than a Religion of Peace™ – would not only show that death threats and violent thuggery work; it would also imply that such thuggery is a morally legitimate response. It is not. Burning down schools and destroying libraries is simply not a sane reaction to the publication of a cartoon. Likewise, threatening to “take to the streets” because an author critical of Islam has had her visa extended is a display of ludicrous vanity and moral incontinence.

Urges to outlaw and punish such satire and dissent ignore the realities of the history and founder of Islam. Censorship not only blunts critical judgment and perpetuates unrealism; it also extends Islamic ticks and neuroses to non-believers and the broader population. Outlawing such mockery (even if it’s truthful), or discouraging it out of fear or pretentious “sensitivity”, makes the taboos of Islam everyone’s taboos. It obliges everyone to pretend that they respect a religious figure who is by any rational standard undeserving of respect, and whose religion is intellectually trivial and philosophically absurd.

And some of us at least aren’t so ready to pretend.

After a brief flickering of clarity at the Guardian, normal service has, alas, been resumed. Today, Faisal al Yafai shares his wisdom on the recent republication of the Muhammad cartoons:

It’s been two years since I ran down the street from my flat in Damascus to see the Danish and Norwegian embassies burning, because of a cartoon published two thousand miles away. Now Danish newspapers have reprinted the same cartoons, of the Muslim prophet Muhammad with a bomb on his head, despite the controversy and lives that were lost because of it.

Note the repeated word because, and its implications. As so often, it is confidently suggested that the cause of the deaths, intimidation and property destruction was the publication of cartoons, rather than the actual perpetrators of those acts, who chose to respond to unflattering illustrations with arson, violence, murder, even threats of genocide. Hold that thought. Linger for a moment on the displacement and curious moral inversion, and note just how readily, and how often, this contortion is performed.

Mr al Yafai offers no analysis of preceding events and no reflection whatsoever on the moral incontinence of Islamist indignation, or its deranged disproportion, or its coercive intent. Nor does he pause to consider whether those who do commit atrocities in the name of Islam – say, by detonating babies, or children, or the mentally disabled – do so because they believe they’re following Muhammad’s own teachings and example. Which is, after all, an implied point of the cartoons. Needless to day, Mr al Yafai chooses to disregard the 80 or so known jihadist groups whose actions helped prompt the illustrations, and those, like Mukhlas Imron, the Bali bombing ‘mastermind’ and leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, who explain their actions as advancing Islamic imperatives. On his capture, Imron repeatedly cited Muhammad as his mandate and inspiration:

You who still have a shred of faith in your hearts, have you forgotten that to kill infidels and the enemies of Islam is a deed that has a reward above no other? Aren’t you aware that the model for us all, the Prophet Muhammad and the four rightful caliphs, undertook to murder infidels as one of their primary activities, and that the Prophet waged jihad operations 77 times in the first 10 years as head of the Muslim community in Medina?

Also disregarded is the stated reason for the cartoons’ republication – i.e., an affirmation of free speech following the arrest of three Muslims accused of plotting to kill one of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard. Such trifling details are, apparently, not to be thought about. Instead, Guardian readers are encouraged to believe that the only conceivable motives are trivial and malicious: 

There are so many sacred cows to be slain in the name of freedom of speech: Barack Obama’s colour, the private life of Princess Diana, Kylie Minogue’s chemotherapy. Why pick on just one? Don’t be respectful and discuss these things in private: shout them from the rooftops! Instead of a few cartoons on one theme every couple of years, the Danes could run a new one every day… So come on, Danish newspaper editors, let’s see some cojones. Desecrate a few idols, push some old lady icons down the stairs and damn the consequences. Then we can all revel in how modern and free and European we all are. But don’t just pick on one weak minority over and over: there’s a word for that and it’s called bullying.

Again, pause for a moment to consider the assertion that the cartoons must constitute the deliberate “bullying” of a “weak minority”, albeit one that claims around a billion or so members. Here, al Yafai echoes a number of his Guardian colleagues, including the chronically disingenuous Karen Armstrong, who denounced the same cartoons as both “aggressive” and published “aggressively”, and Tariq Ramadan, who implied a parity of extremism between those who published the cartoons, or argued for the right to do so, and the devotees of Muhammad who made homicidal threats and set fire to occupied buildings. Apparently we’re supposed to believe that unflattering cartoons can hurt a person in exactly the same way that, say, fists, bricks and fire do.

But what is perhaps most curious about Mr al Yafai’s piece is that it shows a familiar and conspicuous disinterest in whether the cartoons do in fact depict some truth about Muhammad, his teachings and how they are used. A detail which might help explain why they arouse such preposterous rage.

Update:

Oh, yes. I forgot.

Bite me.