Friday Afternoon Roundup - I Tow the Line

TOW BE OR NOT TOE BE

What this silly little exchange brought home to me once again is how liberals are invested in the appearance of intelligence, something that I wrote about in Manufactured Intelligence.

"Intelligence to a modern liberal isn't depth, it's appearance. It isn't even an intellectual quality, but a spiritual quality. Compassionate people who care about others are always "smarter", no matter how stupid they might be, because they care about the world around them.

And that is the supreme duty of the modern liberal intellectual, not to be smart, but to make others feel smart.

The thought never rises within this bubble of manufactured intelligence that all of them might really be idiots who have convinced themselves that they are geniuses because they read the right books (or pretend to read them), watch the right movies and shows (or pretend to) and have the right values (or pretend to)."

The problem isn't that our progressive friend with a PhD and a teaching position somewhere thinks that it's Tow the Line. We all go through life discovering on occasion that we got something very simple wrong. It's that he believes in his own intelligence because he has the right values. He's gay and liberal, therefore he's smart. I'm conservative, therefore I must be stupid.

Any other outcome is impossible. And so he doesn't know what he doesn't know which makes actual progress impossible. In a worldview where intelligence is just liberal values misspelled, Obama's 57 states is correct while Romney's binders of women is a huge gaffe.

It's not a debate over facts. It's a cultural difference. We're losing the ability to discuss anything because the dominant cultural paradigm is in the hands of people who care about values, not facts, and who are convinced that if they have the right values, the facts will follow.

It didn't work in the USSR. It's not working in Venezuela. And it isn't working in America.




GETTING TO THE POINT

The Freedom Center has assembled some 20 of my best articles from last year into an ebook titled "Getting the Point."

It's available here though a donation to the Freedom Center.





 9 Out of 10 Saudi Men Say Eyeshadow on Women Causes Sexual Assaults





STAGES OF WAR

September 11 was a calling card that served its purpose for Al Qaeda moving it along to its next stage from a series of isolated terror groups to a global army with the manpower to launch full scale guerrilla wars seizing cities and entire regions. The core Al Qaeda doesn’t need another September 11. It will leave that to its affiliates, some of which are already playing with WMDs.

The Al Qaeda that we think we know, the terrorist group with cells lurking and plotting attacks, was only an intermittent stage in its growth strategy. The same is true of most terrorist groups. There was a time when the Communists were just another bunch of quarreling groups. Then they became an army and a country and a whole global union of countries. That is where Al Qaeda wanted to go all along.

Al Qaeda wants to destroy America, but it doesn’t need it to do it in the linear fashion that many imagined after September 11, by scaling up to more and more devastating attacks.

How Al Qaeda Is Winning the War on Terror




Saudi Islamic Police Ban Women from Giving Birth Without Male Guardian




FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL

The “Palestinian” case that Judis retroactively constructs is a modern invention and he admits as much. Liberals of the day, like Bartley Crum of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, heard from Dr. Hitti of the Institute for Arab-American Affairs that there was no such entity as Palestine.

Ahmad Shukeiri, before he became the first Chairman of the PLO, told the UN Security Council that, “Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.” Abu Nidal, the ultimate Palestinian terrorist, proclaimed, “Palestine belongs to Syria.” Azmi Bishara, the Arab Israeli MK who fled the country after collaborating with Hezbollah, said in a television interview, “I think the Palestinian nation is a colonial invention.”

Judis dismisses Jewish nationalism as a 19th century invention, when it’s Palestinian nationalism that is a late 20th century invention.

The Colonialism of the Anti-Israel Left




Everyone in the Middle East Hates John Kerry




JUST ADD ENVIRONMENTALISTS

This was just what Lady Young was looking for. She had already been giving lectures and evidence to a House of Lords committee on the EU’s earlier Water Framework directive, proclaiming that one of her agency’s top priorities should be to create more ‘habitats’ for wildlife by allowing wetlands to revert to nature. As she explained in an interview in 2008, creating new nature reserves can be very expensive. By far the cheapest way was simply to allow nature to take its course, by halting the drainage of wetlands such as the Somerset Levels. The recipe she proudly gave in her lectures, repeated to that Lords committee, was: for ‘instant wildlife, just add water’.

How a Fanatical Environmentalist Deliberately Caused UK Flooding




Obama Blames California Drought He Caused on Global Warming




UNCOMMON CORE

The civil war encompasses debates over testing and charter schools. On one side are technocratic progressives backed by Silicon Valley; a small army of successful men and women turned amateur experimenters trying to tinker with schools in their free time through wealthy foundations determined to centralize and nationalize the educational system. On the other side is the traditional inertia of teachers unions still fighting for a school system that gives teachers everything and asks for nothing in return.

On one side is Bill Gates. On the other side is a fifth grade teacher with seniority looking forward to retirement.

But when it comes to Common Core, the unions aren't wrong. Every educational reform is a band aid meant to fix the last reform. Now Common Core already needs fixing.

Common Core is the Left's Latest Educational Civil War




Imam Rapes Sister, Forces her to Abort Baby, Blames Job Stress




OUT OF DAHLANISTAN

All that would make Dahlan a bit of a Shakespearean villain, killing everyone in sight to seize power, playing the United States against Russia and Israel.

Bill Clinton liked Dahlan. He was, until Abbas, the only Palestinian Arab figure to get a private meeting with President Clinton, except for Arafat. The Clinton Administration had quietly signaled that Dahlan was the future. But by then, the moment had slipped away and Bush had replaced Clinton.

It would take a certain kind of crazy ruthlessness to obtain polonium from a Russian source, poison Arafat, kill his nephew and hope to leverage that into power. And Dahlan had it. He was uniquely vicious and ruthless, eager to take dangerous risks… even when compared to his fellow terrorist gang leaders.

Dahlan was willing to take on Arafat and Hamas. His men killed his rivals and ruled over Dahlanistan. If there was anyone who had the nerve to finish off Arafat and hope to profit from the chaos, it was the Palestinian Authority’s version of Titus Andronicus’s Aaron.

Did Mohammed Dahlan Poison Arafat?





2% of Italy is Muslim, 35% of Italian Prisoners are Muslim- There are 181 Imams in Italian prisons.





LAWS ARE FOR LITTLE PEOPLE, NOT LIMO LIBERALS

When the mayor announced his 62-point safe streets initiative, which includes lowering the speed limit to 25 mph, he said, “We want the public to know that we are holding ourselves to this standard.”

As CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer reported Thursday, the mayor’s two-car caravan was seen speeding, blowing through stop signs, and violating other traffic laws. Kramer reported that if the driver of the lead car, which carried the mayor in its passenger seat, had been cited, he would have racked up enough points to get his license suspended.

Bill de Blasio Announces Crackdown on Traffic Violations, Gets Caught Speeding




Social Justice Teens Carve Swastika into Teen Boy’s Head for Calling Them “Gay”




TERROR MAGNET

He explained that PA law grants terrorists imprisoned for more than five years a salary of 4,000 shekels ($1140) a month, which continues for three years following their release from prison. This is in addition to monthly salary payments while in prison.

The terrorist explained that because his first imprisonment for planning a suicide terror attack (which was foiled) lasted less than five years, it was not enough to prompt the 4,000 shekels ($1140) monthly salary upon release. He therefore planned another attack in order to reach a total of five years in prison, which would entitle him to the additional salary upon his second release, which would cover his debts.

Muslim Terrorist in Israel Plotted Terror Attack for US Tax Dollars




California May Pass Law to Protect Black People from Soda




BIG BILL

Bill de Blasio’s runaway $73.7 billion 2015 budget is a more than $4-5 billion increase over Mayor Bloomberg’s already insane $68.5 billion budget for 2014 and $70 billion budget in 2014.

The entire New Jersey state budget in 2013 was $31 billion. The Connecticut state budget was $40 billion. The Pennsylvania state budget was $24 billion.

Bill de Blasio’s city budget is bigger than the budgets of the two other states in the tri-state area with a combined population of 20 million people.

Bill de Blasio Unveils Giant $73.7 Billion Budget




PAGING DR. CRUNK

Meanwhile in Florida, specifically, in 2012, 362 black people and 344 white people were arrested on murder charges. Now we all know that statistics are racist, all justice systems are biased and etc, but those same stats also show 1,729 white people arrested for sexual assault and 968 black people, so that’s a pretty specific bias.

(Considering that Florida is only 17% African-American, that 968 number is still really high). So it’s still entirely reasonable for white people to be afraid of a racist crime wave, not the other way around. Sorry Dr. Crunk.

Salon’s Professor Crunk Claims White-on-Black Murder Wave in Florida





PBS Broadcasts Anti-Israel Claims from Writer Who Thinks Jews are Space Lizards





LYSENKO IS BACK

The NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, predicted a hot winter. They were disastrously wrong. The mistake wasn’t just a technicality. Cities didn’t properly prepare for the coming winter leading to blocked roads, lost work and even deaths.

In New York, Bill de Blasio blamed the government forecasts for his botched handling of the snow situation. He’s not the only one. While local governments still had the responsibility to do the right thing, the Warmist takeover of climate science is leading us into disasters in which dogma trumps science until the snow begins to fall.

Did Warmism Cause the Government to Predict a Warm Winter?





Liberals Less Likely to Know Earth Revolves Around the Sun than Conservatives





LIBRARY EDITION

 The New York Public Library: Racism, Gay Rights, Muslims, No Books

New York Public Library Hosts Tribute to Anti-Semitic and Homophobic 9/11 Truther

We’re talking about Amiri Baraka aka LeRoi Jones. The author of such timeless verses as “Youth ended, I shall try/My gain or loss thereby/Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold.”

Oh sorry. That’s Robert Browning. This is Amiri Baraka. “I got the extermination blues, jew-boys. I got the Hitler syndrome figured.”

This is also Amiri Baraka. “The fag’s death they gave us on a cross… they give us to worship a dead jew and not ourselves.”

And also, “We are all beautiful (except white people, they are full of, and made of shit).”

Princeton Invites 9/11 Truther Who Blamed Boston Marathon Bombing on “American Global Domination” to Deliver Lecture




EVEN IRAN WON'T EMPLOY NORMAN

Nowadays people don’t ask for references. They just Google your name. And if you Google my name, all sorts of horrifying things come up: Holocaust denier, Nazi apologist, supporter of terrorism. And no responsible administrator in anything, forget about academia, quite literally even the post office. And that’s literal, that’s not poetic. Even for a job at the post office, they won’t consider you.

This year, I’m down to two countries. One is Turkey where I may be teaching, there’s a good chance. The other is Iran and I’ve been working on Iran but so far it hasn’t been successful.

Norman Finkelstein Blames Internet for Being Unemployable






LET MY COP KILLING JIHADISTS GO

"In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism…"

"The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum… Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam…"

Black Panther Cop Killer Who Called 9/11 “Blowback” Seeks Parole





Somali Pirate May Receive Asylum in US





BLOOMBERG HAD A MANUAL

The State scientists now regulate all such matters. Once a month our Officer of Hygiene comes and examines each member of the household. He then prescribes the kind of food he thinks you require for the next few weeks, whether it shall be more or less phosphates, or cereals, or carnivorous preparations.

The few men — by comparison, whom I saw seemed to me to be allowed to exist as specimen examples of a fallen race. Of course, this view is more or less exaggeration. But the women here do appear to possess by far the most energy, vigor, vitality and ambition. Their predominance in office just now is owing to their over-powering number, the women’s vote polled being ten to one over that of the men.

The exercises of the day began at the great Ethical Temple. Here ten thousand children were gathered to listen first to a lecture on the history of Christmas. There was a play in which Santa Claus appeared and a number of other legendary characters, to show the children in what mythological, absurd beings the children of the unenlightened nineteenth century believed in. Then ten thousand toys were distributed, dolls and whips and tops, and sleighs and skates. But as all were distributed indiscriminately by State officers to the children as they passed out on review, of course all the boys got the dolls and the girls the whips and tops.

An 1887 Science Fiction Novel Predicted DeBlasio and Bloomberg’s New York




NO BREAD AND NO CIRCUSES

Councilwoman Rosie Mendez (D-Manhattan) has introduced bills to ban the use of “wild or exotic” animals in circuses in the last two sessions of the Council, but they have never come to a vote.

Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito both signed on to previous versions of the bill.

Animals in the circus are horribly abused. Animals in nature don’t naturally wear tutus and stand on their hind legs,” said Allie Feldman, the group’s executive director.

Bill de Blasio May Ban Barnum & Bailey Circus from New York



THE ROUNDUP

Edward Cline writes in Rule of Reason, commenting on the FBI, and among other things, my article.

The FBI has reached a point in its history and functions that it must knuckle under the liberal/left/Marxist perception of criminality, a definition of criminality which exempts genuine criminals by excluding their ideology from official approbation, and treat the ideology's victims as the true criminals. Consciously, or by osmosis, the FBI has adopted those same intrusive, oppressive and totalitarian policies.

Yes, the country is politically and philosophically polarized, between those who value their freedom and those who, no matter how innocuous or petty or grandiose their agenda, wish to extinguish that freedom.

We have reached the point that we fear the FBI knocking on our doors. The FBI, together with the DHS and the DOJ, is gradually becoming, not a counterterrorism shield, but an instrument of counter-freedom.  

The FBI has always been an instrument of policy, not law. And that's an important distinction. To the extent that avoiding terrorist attacks is policy, it will fight it, but the deeper policy is CVE or Countering Violent Extremism which means appeasing Muslims. Thus the core policy is not counterterrorism, but community policing and social justice.




ONCE THE HOPE AND CHANGE GOES IN, DOES IT EVER COME OUT?

1. We admitted that like crazed pale metrosexuals we were powerless over Obama huffing, puffing, and fluffing — that our political lives had become unmanageable, bereft of truth, justice, and integrity.

2. Came to believe that a Constitution once again greater than Obama could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our political will and our Obama addiction over to the care of Common Sense as we understood it.

...from Gerard's Twelve Steps for Obamaholics




THE DIVERSITY OF ONE

 The left likes to use words to mean their opposites. Communist dictatorships like to call themselves “democratic” republics. It’s a cynical tease, because it shows that they know democracy is better than dictatorship.

A cynical lefty euphemism much in use in America is “diversity”. It should mean “variety”, but what it has come to mean in practice is its opposite  - “orthodoxy”: a strict doctrinal uniformity of opinion.

The doctrine has achieved enormous success in the universities, which are no longer open to new ideas, no longer allow free debate, no longer question fixed assumptions. That’s what they once existed for. Now they are temples of political correctness, safes for the secure locking up of leftist doctrine.They want a pointless mix of ethnicities and of as many genders as semantic ingenuity can invent, but not of ideas.

Jillian Becker at The Atheist Conservative commenting on Hanson's latest essay.




WORTHY OF REFLECTION

Joe is hardly a down-the-line right-winger.  He’s more of an ornery, traditional centrist; 30 years ago he would probably have been a “Reagan Democrat.”  But he committed the cardinal sin of challenging Barack Obama on “redistributionist” tax policy during the 2008 campaign.  Apparently, he’ll never be forgiven: not so much for doing that, perhaps, as for failing to recant under pressure afterward.

The hard left has been sarcastic about Joe joining a union, as if it’s ironic: as if joining a union is inconsistent with believing in freedom of choice and keeping what you earn.  That’s worth a pause for reflection.

Jennifer Dyer at the Optimistic Conservative reflects on Joe's new job