“You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” Not.

 

World Economic Forum megalomaniac Klaus Schwab famously said:  “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”  Neil Oliver takes exception to this pronouncement:

From behind one podium after another, western leaders and their lackeys talk more and more openly about a liberal world order – even a rules-based liberal world order. The more I hear and see about a world ordered by self-described liberals and their rules, the less I like it. I certainly don’t recall ever being invited to vote for it. Two years ago I gave scant thought to acronyms like WHO, UN, WEF. Now I watch them with the same attention I give to dogs that look like they might bite.

At some point in the past – and I missed that point too, whenever it was, I will freely admit – the governing class decided they were done with serving us and that they own us and rule us instead. That cancerous thought has metastasized in recent years, so that it’s not just governments and their bureaucrats and preferred scientists who presume to lord it over us, to tell us what to do, what to think.

That same deranged thought is there throughout the greediest capitalist corporations now as well. The technocrats took free speech by the throat long ago, so as to preserve and push their own self-described progressive ideologies. Now that same superiority complex is everywhere else as well.

. . .

I have never in my life before listened to government policy – and to the policies of governments all around the world – and felt endangered. But I do now. If you feel that too – a deep physiological response to the last two years, and a growing sense of something malevolent – then you are not alone. Sometimes it feels like society itself has been poisoned – and that all that society is being offered is yet more poisonous nonsense.

We should notice that it is from among us, the ordinary people, that the farmers and the truckers come – so that it is we who really have the power that matters in the end.

In Sri Lanka, they’re quite a bit further down the line than us – although hardly out of sight. Thousands of people, driven beyond endurance by economic collapse and the worst food and fuel shortages in living memory, found they had nothing left to lose. I read this morning about protestors there storming and occupying their president’s official residence in the city of Colombo.

Desperate people and desperate measures. It’s interesting to note that, contrary to what Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum might think … it turns out that when some people find they actually do own nothing anymore – they’re really not very happy at all. 

Read the full transcript or watch/listen to the video here.  Also posted at America First Report here.

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Elon Musk’s diagram

 MUSK MUSES ON POLITICS

Diagram at NY Post via Off The Press

[click to embiggen]

This doodle says a lot.  Most of the liberals I know seem unaware that the Democrat party has been taken over by the “woke” progressive left.  Elon Musk gets it. 

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Dennis Prager on “leftism” and “meaning”

image credit: drray.com

Starting off 2020 on a philosophical note. . .  Dennis Prager recently published “Greta Thunberg: A Living Explanation of the Left” at Real Clear Politics. His article considers the difference between a “liberal” and a “leftist,” and why conservative and leftists are unable to communicate with each other.  He begins:

It is not easy to understand what the left -- as opposed to liberals -- stands for. If you ask a Christian what to read to learn the basics of Christianity, you will be told the Bible. If you ask a (religious) Jew, you will be told the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. If you ask a Mormon, you will be told the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Ask a Muslim and you will be told the Quran.

But if you ask a leftist what one or two books you should read to understand leftism, every leftist will give you a different answer -- or need some time to think it over. Few, if any, will suggest Marx's "Das Kapital" because almost no leftists have read it and because you will either not finish the book or reject it as incoherent.

So, then, how is one to understand what leftism stands for?

The truth is -- it is almost impossible. What leftist in history would have ever imagined that to be a leftist, one would have to believe that men give birth or men have periods, or that it is fair to women to have to compete in sports with biological males who identify as females?

There are two primary reasons it is so difficult, if not impossible, to define leftism. One is that it ultimately stands for chaos:

-- Open borders.

-- "Non-binary" genders.

-- Nonsensical and scatological "art."

-- "Music" without tonality, melody or harmony.

-- Drag Queen Story Hour for 5-year-olds.

-- Rejection of the concept of better or worse civilizations.

-- Rejection of the concept of better or worse art.

-- Removal of Shakespeare's picture from a university English department because he was a white male.

-- The end of all use of fossil fuels -- even in transportation (as per the recent recommendation by the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization).

-- The dismantling of capitalism, the economic engine that has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty.

And much more.

The other major reason it is impossible to define leftism is that it is emotion-based. Leftism consists of causes that give those who otherwise lack meaning something to cling to for meaning.

Two things about Greta Thunberg, Time magazine's 2019 person of the year, embody these explanations.

Mr. Prager goes on to illustrate the emotional need for “meaning” by examining the strange case of St. Greta.  It explains why those who employ facts and logic have little chance of persuading those whose grasp of facts and logic are subordinate to their emotional needs.  But is also helps those who employ logic and facts to understand the rantings of Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Cher, mainstream media hosts such as Don Lemon and Joy Reid, etc.  Read the rest here.

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Dilbert and Trump

You and Scott Adams probably have had similar experiences. The Wired blog has an article/interview with him on to promote his latest book, and it starts off:

After expressing support for Donald Trump in 2016, Dilbert creator Scott Adams estimates that he lost about 30 percent of his income and 75 percent of his friends. He says that that level of political polarization has created a climate of genuine fear.

“People will come up, and they’ll usually whisper—or they’ll lower their voice, because they don’t want to be heard—and they’ll say, ‘I really like what you’re doing on your Periscope, and the stuff you’re saying about Trump,'” Adams says in Episode 389 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “They’re actually afraid to say it out loud. They literally whisper it to me in public places.”

Adams blames the current climate on social media and a clickbait business model that rewards sensationalism over fact-based reporting. Since the technology is here to stay, he says we’re going to need new societal norms to help foster a calmer, more constructive political discourse.

Yes, but this gets us into another major issue contributing to the political polarization, i.e., emotions on one side vs critical thinking on the other.  Adams expands on that point in an earlier book, Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter, pictured above.  More of the Wired Scott Adams interview is here.

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The unbridgeable divide

René Magritte's classic

Liberal / progressive vs conservative.   I’ve usually attributed the unbridgeable divide to critical thinking vs emotions.  Dennis Prager expands on the reasons for the divide:

The Left-Right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable. There are three reasons.

First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be. The Right believes the Founders’ vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The Left (not liberals) shares none of those values.

Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide. Left and Right have different perceptions of reality.

. . .

The Left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. This is, therefore, not an opinion divide—”You prefer capitalism. I prefer socialism”—but a reality divide.

The reason this is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation’s future. 

. . .

The full article is here. 

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Fascism in America

via Bookworm Room

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Human nature and Western civilization

Art credit: bridgeguys.com

The Lady of the House at Bookworm Room has a lengthy review essay of a book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (out in paperback in 2012), which considers the default conditions of human nature, development of Western civilization, and how those behaviors and developments are reflected in today’s political stand-offs. It’s a long but worthwhile read; click here. Lady Bookworm concludes:

It’s time for me to summarize what Pinker argues took humankind from a time of tremendous cruelty and violence to the world in which we live now. These factors were:

• The development of the nation-state, which quashed local warfare, whether it was the warfare of Stone Age tribesman or medieval warlords.
• The development of manners aimed at raising mankind above its animal nature.
• The development of commerce, which forced empathy upon those who wished to be successful.
• The rule of law, not in the form of the random tyranny of a police state, but in the form a stable judicial system that allows people to calculate in advance the cost of their actions, whether in the civil or the criminal context.
• And two more Bookworm additions: The decrease in alcohol consumption, because excessive alcohol intake brings people closer to their animal natures, and the premium placed upon electing mature, experienced people to positions of power.     

Today’s Leftists seek to destroy every single one of those civilizing influences:

• Leftists want to destroy borders, which ends the nation-state. Their optimistic ideal is one-world government under the U.N.’s aegis. The reality will be a retreat into the tribalism that was normative for most of human history and that is defined by almost unholy levels of violence and torture against perceived enemies.
• Leftists are breaking down all normative behavior (once called “manners”). Whether it’s screaming at conservatives in restaurants, attacking politicians in their homes, being obsessed with poop, destroying sexual norms (including have a lesbian smooch at the Thanksgiving Day parade, a venue in which no one previously smooched), chronic public nudity, or anything else that once held together civilized Western society, the Left is against it. (And please feel free to add to that list.)
• Leftists are irredeemably hostile to commerce. The Leftist dream is a tightly controlled socialist economy, although one in which the rich Blue Leftists, including Barack “at some point you’ve made enough money” Obama, will retain their wealth. Place Alexandria Occasional-Cortex and her ilk in charge of the American economy, and we will go backwards to a medieval time in which profit is evil, innovation is discouraged, lending money is impossible, and the empathy and cooperation that trade brought are gone. (By the way, the Koran makes usury illegal, which is one of the reasons Muslim majority countries are economically stagnant unless they have oil wealth.)   
• Leftists are hostile to the rule of law. As we see in everything from the Title IX travesties on college campuses to Justice Kavanaugh’s travails to the Obama judge’s attacks on Trump’s executive power, Leftists don’t believe in the equal application of the rule of law. To them, law is an instrument of power to be used, not to create reliability in both civil and criminal matters in order to guide people’s actions, but as a cudgel to enforce their power. In other words, their “law” is the law of tyranny, not of freedom. This hostility to the rule of law also shows itself in the whole “sanctuary city/state” notion and the tolerance for criminal homelessness, both of which have reduced large parts of California, once America’s most prosperous state, to Third World status.
• And finally, the Left has long been in the vanguard of two other trends: (1) Urging the middle class to use drugs that interfere with civilized behavior and functionality. Starting with the Hippies and their tuning in and dropping out and continuing with the binge drinking on Leftist-controlled college campuses and the push for recreational (as opposed to medicinal) pot, Leftists encourage behavior that decreases mankind’s connection to its human nature and brings it closer to its animal nature. (2) Turning political power over to young people, whether by decreasing the voting age or by championing practically prepubescent people in politics. Again, a perfect example is Occasional-Cortex, a woman with a dismal education and no life experience, who’s seen as the Great Hope for the Left.   

Bookworm’s full essay is here.

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The lies we were told about who would silence free speech

art credit: National Coalition Against Censorship

John Kass at The Chicago Tribune comments on the liberal reaction to conservative speech, which is, essentially: “Shut Up.”

The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right.

Conservatives would take away our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the young.

And then, with the universities in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.

. . .

But the lie is obvious now, isn't it?

Because it is not conservatives who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.

The left did all that.

It's there in front of you, the thuggish mobs of the left killing free speech at American universities. The thugs call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists.

They beat people up and break things and set fires and intimidate. These are not anti-fascists. These are fascists. This is what fascists do.

. . .

What is the cost for all this?

Free speech, without which there is no republic.

American universities were once thought to be the last great refuge of ideas, where ideas could flourish and be challenged and debated. But today, the university is the place where liberty and ideas go to die.

. . .

Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter has been silenced at Berkeley, where the free speech movement was born. And other intellectuals, including Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald, have been silenced at other colleges, attacked by mobs.

If the left agrees with your views, you may speak. If the left doesn't agree, they will shut you down. This is America now.

. . .

University administrators have made a show of wringing their hands. But they're hypocrites. They're part of this. They are of the same cloth. They allowed this seed to bloom. They watered it, by giving in to the young who demanded a safe space from intellectual challenge.

Safe spaces are not about learning or critical thinking. Safe spaces belong to education camps, where future bureaucrats are trained in the Orwellian shaping of language and the culling of threatening ideas.

. . .

All speech challenging the status quo is offensive — to the establishment. And free speech is what American liberty is about.

Unless, of course, you're of the hard left, and can hunt free speech at American universities and crush it.

That's not fiction. That's not fantasy. And it is not a lie. It's happening now, in the United States.

Read the rest here.

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Trump Derangement syndrome

Cartoon credit: A.F. Branco at Liberty Alliance via RedState

We've seen the syndrome before with George W. and Sarah Palin. It's baaaaack with a vengeance. American Thinker contributor David Zukerman reports that “Trump Derangement Syndrome sends NYT’s David Brooks off the deepend”

Once upon a time, David Brooks was considered the house conservative at the New York Times.  But in his April 21 New York Times column, he put President Donald J. Trump on a list of "strong men" that includes Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and North Korea's Kim Jong-un.  Mr. Brooks noted that Erdoğan has "dismantle[d] democratic institutions and replace[d] them with majoritarian dictatorship."  The Times columnist went on to assert: "While running for office, Donald Trump violated every norm of statesmanship built up over these many centuries[.]"  Mr. Brooks, however, does not elaborate, explain, or elucidate the nature of the alleged violations.

But when it comes to discussion of President Trump, NeverTrumps like David Brooks feel no need to place their anti-Trump views on a foundation of fact.  For Trump-haters, the truth is in the accusation.  And so, comparing President Trump to Turkey's Erdoğan, Mr. Brooks does not set forth the democratic institutions dismantled by Mr. Trump, nor does he provide evidence of the "majoritarian dictatorship" that was constructed during the first 100 days of the Trump administration.  How could he, there being no such dismantling, no such dictatorship here?

Mr. Brooks recognizes "the collapse of liberal values at home," citing "fragile thugs who call themselves students [who] shout down and abuse speakers in a weekly basis."  But are these illiberals to be found under the banner of Trumpism – or under the banner of the totalitarianism of left?

. . .

The threat to the American spirit of liberty is not to be found among conservatives, or in the corridors of today's White House.  The threats to democracy, to free speech, to the free flow of information are to be found on the left side of the political divide, from neo-totalitarians who, like the execrable Howard Dean, would limit free speech to persons who agree with the political biases of leftists – with the encouragement of NeverTrumps in the media like David Brooks, who lack the ability to distinguish a duly elected American president from the brutal dictator of a totalitarian state.

Read the rest here.

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