A collection of miniature origami. 

Horse, by Anja Markiewicz, 75mm.

Jeff Goldstein quotes Victor Davis Hanson on matters inexplicable:

Another mystery is the leftism of those who live in a world of hierarchical privilege. If we examine the elite media (the MSNBC or New York Times megaphones), or Hollywood (the lifestyle of a Sean Penn), or leftist politicians (a Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, or Al Gore), there is almost no tangible difference in the way they live their lives from those of the corporate or private sector elite they deprecate. […]

That [raises] the question — is the elite left’s infatuation with the good life not so much a paradox, not a hypocrisy at all, but rather a sort of medieval exemption, or perhaps penance? The price for living well is to advocate government subsidies for the less well-off that are rarely seen, and disdain for those who grub for money and as tea partiers lack the refinement that is the dividend of the very rich or the so well connected. Does buying a $40,000 ticket to the president’s 50th birthday party mean that one is exempt from the presidential invective against “millionaires and billionaires” and “corporate jet owners”? As a general rule, the more I hear of such carping, the more I assume the whiner covets what he so childishly is obsessed with ending.

The mysteries of the millionaire leftist have been pondered here quite often. It seems reasonable to suppose that our leftwing elite aren’t vehemently opposed to their own status, influence and unusual wealth, which often exceeds that of those whose “unjust rewards” they publicly denounce. It seems they merely object to the wrong kind of rich people. Which is to say, people whose views and backgrounds may differ from their own. Maybe Alan Rusbridger, Jeremy Irons and Polly Toynbee, for instance, imagine themselves as part of an exempted nomenklatura – as consultants and advisors, clearing the road to our egalitarian utopia, where their influence and status will grow accordingly. Or maybe they’ve simply managed to construct personalities that are impervious to their own kleptomania and colossal hypocrisy. Which would also explain why Rusbridger, Irons and Toynbee are so comically unprepared for having their own affairs considered in any way relevant.

Nearly ten years on, Johnathan Pearce, Nick Gillespie and Tim Sandefur reflect on terrible events and inadequate art:

What is an artist, who has spent his or her career producing work to condemn capitalism, going to produce to mourn the loss of the World Trade Centre at the hands of anti-capitalist terrorists? They certainly aren’t going to produce a second Mourning Athena. As Robert Hughes says, American artists particularly are obsessed “with creating identities, based on race, gender and the rest. These have made for narrow, preachy, single-issue art in which victim credentials count for more than aesthetic achievement. You get irritable agitprop…. The fact that an artwork is about injustice no more gives it aesthetic status than the fact that it’s about mermaids.”

And Jan Blits revisits the University of Delaware’s infamous “social justice education” programme: 

At every opportunity students were told that their identity, first and foremost, is not “human,” but this or that ethnic, racial, religious or sexual group: “Native American,” “Hispanic,” “black,” “Asian,” “white,” “male,” “female,” “Muslim,” “Hindu,” “gay,” straight,” and so on. Whites and males were singled out and publicly shamed for their “privilege.” […] Students were also forced to behave like bigots and spew forth stereotypes about members of other ethnic, racial, religious or sexual groups. When students objected that they were being forced to say things they didn’t mean, the [resident assistants] told them that they were saying what, deep down, they really thought. The obvious purpose of this exercise was to shame whites in general, and white males in particular. But, in fact, minority students especially hated the exercise, because it was in their name that other students were being unfairly shamed and abused.

Details of the pathological race fantasies at the heart of Delaware’s “social justice” programme can be found here, including the belief that “the term [racist] applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States.” Students’ accounts of their tribal indoctrination – referred to by its proponents as a “treatment” intended to leave “a mental footprint on [students’] consciousness” – can be found here: “The immediate effects were to intimidate and humiliate. The long-term effect is to teach conformity.” And if you believe such behaviour must be a one-off aberration, better think again.

As usual, feel free to add your own.

Simen Thoresen alerts us to the existence of Preparatio Mortis, a new work unveiled at the Vienna International Dance Festival and aimed at the discerning aesthete. Guided by Belgian artist and choreographer Jan Fabre, dancer Annabelle Chambon “tackles the still effective taboo ‘death’ and her body enter[s] into a transformation process,” while Bernard Foccroule elevates our minds with his “intensive” and “spherical” organ stylings. As will no doubt be obvious to everyone, Ms Chambon’s “assignment” is nothing less than “an attempt to reconcile life and death.”

The video above is of course a mere glimpse of the project’s artistic highlights. Happily, the full performance lasts for 50 minutes.

Update, with added nudity:

Tom Clougherty on Tax Freedom Day:  

Tax Freedom Day 2011 came on May 30, three days later than in 2010. That means that for the first 149 days of the year, Britons were earning for the taxman. Only on May 30 did they start earning for themselves. But even this alarming figure understates the heavy financial burden imposed by the British state. If the government had to finance all its spending through taxes, rather than relying on borrowing, Tax Freedom Day would not have come until July 1. To put it another way, the government would have to take every penny earned in the United Kingdom from January 1 to June 30 – a full six months – in order to balance the books for the year at current levels of spending.

Evan Coyne Maloney and Greg Lukianoff on speech codes, conformity and the heckler’s veto:  

These are not cases that are really open for debate as far as their constitutionality, but what ends up happening is that, because the rules are there, people feel as though they can’t engage in this discussion to begin with. If you’re a college freshman and you’re worried about your grades, you’re worried about what your professors think of you, you’re not going to do anything that’s going to get you in trouble with the school. You’re certainly not very likely to get involved in a court case…  When it does go to court the schools always lose defending speech codes. The problem is, who wants to be the guy who spends their college career in court so that they can say what you can say anywhere else in the country?

My review of Maloney’s film Indoctrinate U can be found here. The subjects of campus censorship and efforts to “correct” improper views have been discussed many, many times.

And via Franklin, Charlotte Young discusses art bollocks, a term that may be familiar to regular readers of this blog. Ms Young’s former art tutor, Nico de Oliviera, coughs up this gem:

Stefan Brüggemann’s work, of course, comments on the absence of conceptual art, because conceptual art no longer exists. It existed once, but it no longer exists. So what do we put in its place? What does Stefan put in its place? One might say that he re-presents something which is absent, and in this absence what he represents is remarkably similar to that which once was.

The of course is, of course, typical of the genre. Readers keen to bask in the aesthetic radiance of Mr Brüggemann’s work can do so here. And here. And here.

As usual, feel free to add your own in the comments.

Mark Steyn on the hierarchy of phobias and the collectivist inversion of human rights:  

In some of the oldest free societies on the planet we’ve entirely corrupted the concept of human rights. It’s not very difficult. Human rights are rights for humans, rights for individuals. Back in 1215, Magna Carta – Magna Carta Libertatum, to give it its full title – couldn’t have made it plainer. Real human rights are restraints that the people place upon the king. We understood that eight centuries ago. Today, we’ve entirely perverted and corrupted the principle. We’re undermining real human rights, like freedom of speech, and replacing them with ersatz rights that, rather than restraining the king, give him vastly increased state power to restrain the rights of his subjects. These new rights are not handed out equally but in different ways to different degrees according to which approved identity groups you fall into. 

The tribal approach to rights and entitlement is discussed here and here. Consequent attempts at attitude management may also be of interest. Though some academics prefer the term “social justice education,” or simply “treatment.” 

Bella Gerens notes the conformist trajectory of the comical Laurie Penny:

She has certainly worked very hard to communicate a message, but I don’t know if it’s the message she intended. Like many people from Wadham [College], she seems to want to improve the world in a certain way. But what she seems to do is reinforce the belief that privileged people from privileged educational backgrounds can, as long as they say the right things, engender trust among the lower classes whilst taking their place among the elite… She is travelling an extremely well-trodden road bearing the placard of thoroughly-explored philosophies. And the destination, reached so many times before, has benefitted no one except the travellers themselves.

And Heather Mac Donald revisits ‘radical’ graffiti and the art world’s double standards:  

Art in the Streets is a classic exercise of the elites’ juvenile dalliance with countercultural norms that they have no intention of adopting in their own protected lives. The Museum of Contemporary Art has never tolerated graffiti on its own premises; none of its wealthy Hollywood and real-estate-mogul trustees would ever allow tagging on their homes or businesses, either. So opposed is MOCA to unauthorised graffiti on its walls that it stationed additional security guards around its premises before the show opened, to guard against the inevitable upsurge in graffiti that the show would (and did) trigger. Yet there is no sign that [MOCA director, Jeffrey] Deitch or his trustees grasp the contradiction. Indeed, in a breathtaking display of stunted moral development, Art in the Streets never even addresses the seminal fact that behind every act of graffiti is an invisible property owner whose rights have been appropriated against his will.

Readers may spot a thematic link with, among others, our academic radical, Alexander Vasudevan.

Feel free to add your own.