In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
The problem of a biased mainstream news media is nothing new, as William F. Buckley, Jr. discusses with Midge Decter and Russ Braley.
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: …and justice for none.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Gunmakers are legally protected from being sued for the misuse of their products. But an aggressive lawyers and a loophole or two is enough for Remington to fork over $73,000,000.
“The suit was first filed against the company in 2014. Claiming wrongful death, the plaintiffs accused Remington of engaging in deceptive marketing tactics in promoting the firearm as a hyper-masculine weapon. One Remington ad depicted the gun with the words: ‘Consider Your Man Card Reissued.’ The gunmaker denied a casual relationship between the advertising strategy and the tragedy.
“…
“While federal law shields gun manufacturers from some wrongful death litigation, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Remington was not immune from liability on the matter of its marketing practices. Remington appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which dismissed the opportunity to review the case.”
It become increasingly obvious to more and more that the seeming double-standard of the Left is actually a single standard of the “heads I win tails you lose variety”. However, it would be to simplistic and unfortunate to chalk it up to mere selfishness. Beneath every double standard is a single standard a person, or at least a person’s chosen ideology, holds to.
In the case of gender identity, as it is with race or other collectivist identity, it is a dialectical one… of sorts.
Hegelian dialectic, as reviled as it may be, was still a method to get to the truth, not a truth itself, let alone a proscriptive or even deductive determiner of the future that it degenerated into beginning with Marx and continuing abasement into a faith based belief of being on “the right side of history”. An example of this can be seen in modern “gender theory”, specifically Critical Gender Theory, from which gender is a social construct and a non-essence that acts like an essence.
In the woke dialectic—the 19th Century’s dialectic degenerate decedent—the thesis is the invented social construct of “cis-heteronormativity” sustained by a system of oppression that is imposed on society, thus creating form and effect. The antithesis is the equal and opposite imposition of “trans-homonormativity” that must be imposed by deconstruction systems of oppression. The synthesis, then is not the prior unknown result of applying antithesis to thesis, but the immanentized eschaton that the antithesis is constructed and thus derived from.
The Left wants—needs—to “disrupt, dismantle, and deconstruct” everything because their utopian scheme requires working from year zero.
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DISRUPT! DISMANTLE! DECONSTRUCT!Wokies say that all the time because in woke world to "disrupt, dismantle, and deconstruct" refers to a specific set of strategies for attacking something. So, let's talk about what it means to disrupt, dismantle and deconstruct.
A thread🧵 pic.twitter.com/3QPXSynZhf
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) September 8, 2020
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First, we must understand the woke want a TOTAL revolution. Disruption, dismantling, and deconstruction are the tools they plan to use to tear down everything in the way of that revolution. Here, Critical Theorist Henry Giroux explicitly states that the woke want a revolution: pic.twitter.com/yZU2oZwOgL— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) September 8, 2020
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What gets disrupted, dismantled, and deconstructed?
The answer is every social entity the woke think might prevent their "revolution." This includes but isn't limited to: language, music, art, churches, businesses, the military, universities, institutions, etc.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) September 8, 2020
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The woke think all of society needs to be transformed.ALL. OF. IT.
This means every single social entity we use to build a society, from family to government, needs to either get on board with the revolution or be disrupted, dismantled, and deconstructed.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) September 8, 2020
Good governance requires sober consideration of the facts and judicial application of a conservative governing philosophy. Even in private life, sober consideration of facts and a judicial application of one’s own beliefs, is a sane and rational way of living one’s life.
Exasperated by social media, far too often people not only take a knee-jerk response, but become so opposed to any dissent that they will accept more extreme positions they wouldn’t have ever considered before. It is a stupid form of tribalism that traps people into a starkly manichean worldview.
Your humble author had decided to ignore any Corona-chan related “hot takes” back in 2020. However, this does not mean idiocy brought up by, but not directly about Covid, ought to be ignored, but rather it ought to be noted.
Those who are strongly anti-mandate often become at least somewhat anti-vax. Similarly, many who appropriately argue Joe Rogan should not canceled end up arguing his speech hurts nobody. Defenses of freedom often morph into arguments that an exercise of the freedom has no cost. https://t.co/HYNo2PTZMO
— Patterico (@Patterico) February 12, 2022
You’ll see this over and over every time someone defends a cherished freedom. It’s too apparently too uncomfortable to talk about trade-offs these days, so you’ll start to see increasingly absurd attempts to minimize and deny the damage caused by said cherished freedom.
— Patterico (@Patterico) February 12, 2022
Any criticism of someone exercising the cherished freedom in a harmful way is ritualistically denounced as fascism, even if the criticism acknowledges the freedom and the lawfulness of its exercise. We hear: “But people use the same arguments to shut the freedom down!”
— Patterico (@Patterico) February 12, 2022
Increasingly, teachers and academics are required to no only affirm Left-wing ideology dressed up as “diversity, inclusion, and equity” or other such set us euphemisms, which has the effect of shutting heterodox ideas from consideration in academia.
The James G. Martin Center, in conjunction with the Goldwater Institute and the Ethics in Public Policy Center, have written a short and concise model legislation for state legislators to consider. The main text reads:
A. No political test or qualification shall ever be required as a condition of admission into, or promotion within, any public educational institution of the state, as teacher, employee, or student.
- For the purposes of this section, “political test”:
- Includes:
(a) Compelling or soliciting an applicant, teacher, employee, student, or pupil to identify commitment to or make a statement of personal belief in support of any ideology or movement
(i) That promotes the differential treatment of any individual or groups of individuals based on race or ethnicity, including either of the following:
- Any initiative or formulation of diversity, equity and inclusion beyond upholding the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
- Any theory or practice that holds that systems or institutions upholding the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution are racist, oppressive or otherwise unjust.
(ii) That promotes a specific partisan, political, or ideological set of beliefs
(b) Giving preferable consideration to an applicant, teacher, employee, or student for opinions expressed or actions taken in support of
(i) another individual or a group of individuals, in which the institution’s consideration is based on the race or ethnicity of those other individuals
(ii) any other specific partisan, political, or ideological set of beliefs
Does not include fidelity to, or an oath or effort taken to uphold, the Constitution of [State] or the Constitution of the United States.
News of the Week for Feb. 20th, 2022
Justin Trudeau has shown himself to be his (real) daddy’s son and started overtly acting like a totalitarian tyrant with his response to the Canadian trucker protest over Covid measures being imposed.
Your humble author decided way back in the middle of 2020 to ignore the vast majority of “hot takes” about Corona-chan, and this article is not about the actual requirements, or even the trucker protest including whether said protest is illegal and if so what would be the most prudent way of upholding the law. This article isn’t even about the use of “emergency” powers and martial law… per se, but it is about what is being done to perpetuate them. Specifically, the prevention of the Canadian Parliament from meeting to discuss the emergency powers and potentially vote to end them.
A police action was used as justification for canceling the debate.
“Canada’s Parliament will not meet Friday to debate the emergency powers Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked on Monday because of a “police operation” to clear out the Freedom Convoy protesters in downtown Ottawa.
“The House of Commons was supposed to continue debate on whether to affirm the use of the Emergencies Act to crack down on the anti-vaccine-mandate protests. But in a message to lawmakers, House Speaker Anthony Rota announced the House will not sit because ‘a police operation is expected to take place on Wellington Street and other locations in the downtown core of Ottawa.’”
And yes, members of the Canadian Parliament wanted to meet and exercise their legal prerogative but have been prohibited to do so.
And, if they can’t meet, they can’t vote to end the emergency declaration.
“If either the House of Commons or the Senate of Canada votes against the motion to confirm the declaration of an emergency, the emergency will end.”
Preventing a parliament from meeting to stop them from refusing to agree with a dictatorial emergency act sure sounds like a greater threat to democracy than what the emergency declaration was in response to.
When the Butlerian Jihad has come and went, what will we replace A.I. and other computers with? One demonstrated solution that is superior to A.I. is to use living brain cells.
“Living brain cells in a dish can learn to play the video game Pong when they are placed in what researchers describe as a ‘virtual game world’. ‘We think it’s fair to call them cyborg brains,’ says Brett Kagan, chief scientific officer of Cortical Labs, who leads the research.
“Many teams around the world have been studying networks of neurons in dishes, often growing them into brain-like organoids. But this is the first time that mini-brains have been found to perform goal-directed tasks, says Kagan.”
That’s right, we are not one step closer to creating genetically engineered hyperintellegent catgirls who can perform the calculations on the level of a Mentat!
Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: You don’t disagree with the Nomenklatura, are you Kulak?
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Who is responsible for fixing this mess that the Nomenklatura caused? Private property owners, of course!
“As the Bay Area continues to struggle under the weight of its homelessness crisis, officials and nonprofits are asking local residents to do more than hand out meals or donate spare change. They’re asking them to open up their homes.
“Nearly 30,000 people are unhoused in the five-county Bay Area, and there isn’t nearly enough room in the region’s existing affordable housing developments. To fill the gaps, service providers increasingly are recruiting private landlords to take in homeless tenants. Some property owners are renting out entire units in exchange for agreements that the government or a nonprofit will cover the rent. Others are offering up spare bedrooms in their homes – sometimes in exchange for a small stipend, and sometimes as a purely charitable act.”
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