The Madness Of Crowds, Douglas Murray

 Here is a Review From National Review.

There are a lot of tabs in my copy, which means that Murray covered a lot of points that I find important. 

As I got to the afterward, I was struck by Murray's observation that while he had stepped on some of the most contentious issues of our time (gays, women, race, and transexuality), he had largely been treated "fairly", and the book was popular. My view is that the fact that he considers himself to be gay is the reason for that ... as he covers in the first section of the book, gay is the "foundation" of Identity Politics -- a member of that identity can pass through the "minefield" of identity if they step carefully. Murray seems to have largely achieved that. 

He does a good job of pointing out the absurdities of our age relative to his four categories. One of the themes is; what is "hardware" in humans ("nature" -- wired in, part of DNA); vs what is "software" (  "nurture", changed by environment, learnable, teachable).

The base of this discussion ... "hardware is fixed and therefore morally OK" seems fatally flawed. Certainly sexual drives are "hardware", however there is such a thing as celibacy, and monogamy, which are socially (imperfectly) standards. In the age of "if it feels good, do it", it seems that the "hardware vs software" a distinction without a difference. It seems applicable to many things ... obesity, addiction, pedofillia, ...

He arrives at essentially the same conclusion as Christ as in "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God", ie, a fixed unchangeable morality is what we need. Nietzsche says we have culturally killed God, so we seek to create a new "god" via science, culture ... POWER. Thus the fight. From this review:

Murray spends a significant amount of time considering how we got to this stage and declares that it derives from an absence of meaning from the loss of “grand narratives.” Presumably, by this he means the loss of a conviction that our great, Liberal utopia is no longer worth saving, let alone maintaining. Tantalizing as this may be, the loss of this conviction is not discussed at much length in The Madness of Crowds, although it does feature extensively in The Strange Death of Europe.

On page 256, he takes a shot at this; "A sense of purpose is found in working out what is meaningful in our lives and then orienting ourselves over time as closely as possible to those centers of meaning".  

Although he doesn't admit it, he is basically declaring what everyone since Nietzsche has discovered -- we try valiantly to pull ourselves up to meaning by our own bootstraps, and discover that it comes back to FAITH ... in something that we are going to make to be "transcendent" ... therefore an idol. This is covered very well in "Moral, Believing Animals". 

His closing sentence is; "To assume that that sex, sexuality, and skin color mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal." 

Eternally, "sex, sexuality and skin color" DO mean nothing. We are all equally sinful, and equally redeemable in the eyes of God. There was even once a country called "america" that declared that: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

No creator, no "unalienable". Or on the terms of the "leader" of Wokeistan, "endowed by the thing" ... the once shining nation on a hill is gone. 

America Is Back - To Bombing Syria

 https://spectator.us/topic/certainty-life-death-middle-eastern-airstrikes/?utm_source=Spectator+USA+Email+Signup&utm_campaign=5c663bb522-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_8_31_2020_19_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_edf2ae2373-5c663bb522-154689905&mc_cid=5c663bb522&mc_eid=43b2a02730

Tweedle dum, tweedle dee ... except the MSM is fine with it when Democrats do it. 

The Splendid And The Vile, Eric Larson

 Here is NPRs review of the book. 

If you haven't read lot of Churchill books, this is a good one to cover especially the early war years. Larson is very readable, and tends to approach things from somewhat of a "woman's perspective".  Romances, affairs and unrequited loves are documented -- not the typical fare of such books. He also tends to go more into the relationships between the players -- in some ways it reads more like a novel than a historical book. 

As in any decently written Churchill book, it makes it clear that Winston was the indispensible, very unique, and somewhat eccentric man. 

What Do We Have In Common?

 Powerline Link

Good description of the divided concerns in Wokeistan.  

I happen to have just finished "Bully Pulpit". Sadly? Or happily? Things have not changed much since the early 1900's. Oh, the players may be somewhat different ... Republicans are now more "Free Traders", and while there are still political machines on both sides, the big ones are mostly Democrat.  These days, "The Malefactors of Great Wealth" are now the Davos elite, mass media, world government bureaucracy,  and the tech titans. The "bourgeois middle class" is now largely bureaucratic administors (in and out of government), + medical and some higher level tech rather than farmers, small business, etc. 

"Division" has been baked into all human systems since we lived in caves. Sure, it ebbs and flows, but "Tom Brady, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates" sort of people are always going to make A LOT more than Benchwarmer Bob, the corner grocer, and your cleaning lady. Tools only make it worse -- the more powerful the tools, the greater the division. 

Can you fix it? Sure! See Churchill! 

‘The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.’

-Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 22 October 1945

Certainly a simplification (as he well knew), but totally true in general. Since Socialism inherently produces much less weath, there is less inequality. The elite will still be far more wealthy that the commoner, but except for imports, the goods will be of a lower quality. 

The Internet is a tool that lets you be nastier, more isolated, and more tribal. We seem to be using it "well". 

Vernon Jordan, Civility

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/remembering-vernon-jordan.php

The linked is a nicely done remembrance of Vernon Jordan, a big time DC power broker, civil rights activist, lawyer, Democrat. 

My main reason for posting is a comparison of how Democrats are often treated when they die by conservatives, vs how conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are treated by liberals and media when they pass. 

We all have death in common, it is a great opportunity to show a bit of civility relative to political difference could maybe be dispensed with in the face of eternity. 

Many left wing reactions though, tend to resemble Jack Nicholson's character in Batman. 

When one side of civility dies, can the other be far behind? 

 

Jordan Peterson, Savage Messiah

 https://merionwest.com/2020/10/26/jordan-peterson-and-bringing-back-solzhenitsyn/

Interesting article relative to a book on Peterson that I will likely be reading at some point. 

Bully Pulpit, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

https://www.spectator.com.au/2013/12/the-bully-pulpit-by-doris-kearns-goodwin-review/ 

The link will give you an idea of what is covered in the book ... often with much more detail of the political nuts and bolts, how the wives impacted their husbands (pretty natural for many women, it goes back to Eve) and most of all, the worship of "progressivism". 

The assumption is "progressivism is good" of course. We are "progressing", but towards what exactly? In many ways, we have never moved from the age of the "Bully Pulpit", except the press has become even more biased, and of course we have a lot more technology than was present then. 

While the book really never mentions the vast influx of immigrants (legal then), but only the result - exploitation, low wages, slums, crime, unionization, etc. Why did they come and stay? Obviously because the conditions they found here were much better than the conditions they had in Europe, in which opportunity was very limited,  and in some cases (Irish) so bad that starvation was an issue. 

As is always the case when there is a massive influx of poor, there was exploitation by business and moderately wealthy, through low wages, poor living conditions, and the exploitation of their vulnerability by political machines. 

Today, we have massive illegal immigration, and the results are the same -- low wages, poor living conditions, and limited opportunity (they are illegal after all). However, business and the moderately wealthy (remember "Nannygate" in the Clinton years). Why do they come? Because as bad as we see conditions for them here, they are way better than where they come from. 

Today, press bias is even more celebrated than it was then. However at the turn of the centruy, the bias was declared, as it is often denied today. Income disparity today is greater than it was then, and the Davos elite, Google, Amazon, WalMart and the massive Deep State keep the "deplorables" in relatively hopeless conditions -- albeit with more entertainment in their increasingly isolated masked homes. Back then at least they mostly had church, family, and ethnic unity/traditions. Today, isolation and increasing government dependence make their lives more meaningless, often with the result being lonely addiction and suicide. 

On page 445, Teddy is quoted as saying "...to see the nation divided into two parties, one containing the bulk of the property owners and conservative people, the other the bulk of the wageworkers and the less prosperous people generally; each party insisting upon demanding much that was wrong, and each party sullen and angered by real and fancied grievances". 

We have "progressed" so far in 100 years! 

In 1906, power and fame had not fully corrupted Teddy and he still had some grasp of reality: 

"I must represent not the excited opinion of the West but the real interests of the whole people". Those interests would be ill served he curtly rejoined by turning the operation of the railroads over to government employees for "he knew better than anyone else could how inefficient and undependable they were". 

One might think that Amtrak would  have finally proven that point, but in 100 years, half the country still thinks more government, and even socialism is a "bully idea". 

I much enjoyed learning a lot more about Taft. The saddest part of the book is how Teddy's lust for power and narcissism destroyed their friendship, although somewhat like Jefferson and Adams, they did reconcile before death. 

As always,  unforeseen events affect history. On April 10, 1912, Major Archie Butt, a friend and go-between between Teddy and Taft was killed when the Titanic sank. He was a great support to Taft, and his loss during the incredibly rancorous election of 1912 added to Taft's pain. 

There are good many parallels between Teddy and Trump -- both upper class, willful, often nasty, extremely popular with the "masses", and quite shallow and unrealistic about what they could accomplish against "the system". 

Kearns Goodwin is a leftist "progressive" ideologue and the book is absolutely written from that perspective. What is left out (massive immigration at the time being a major example), and near total blindness to the downsides of mob rule, need to be considered if one chooses to dive in. It is overly long for what it covers, but decently written, and gives a good one sided view of the turbulent turn of the 19th to 20th century time.

The Settled Science of Climate Change Marches On

 In real science, it is a THEORY of climate change ... since every prediction is only a theory until it is tested, and even then, it is only as good as the next test. If it is science, it MUST be falsifiable -- otherwise it is not science, but dogma. We still speak of Einstein's theory of relativity, because that is what it is, and parts of it have been shown to be wrong, or at least not universally accurate. 

In the case of Climate Change, which was formerly Global Warming -- but was rebranded to be more marketable, the prediction that the climate will change is like "you will surely die" ... the climate WILL change, but so what? Specific, accurate, testable theories are valuable. We often learn much more from finding out our theories are significantly or even totally wrong - that is actual scientific progress. 

The "certain prediction" (until the next ice age) is that the earth is warming in the big picture, as it has been for 10K years. We are admonished by the man behind the curtain to pay no attention to record low temps, they are "weather". OTOH record high temps are not weather, but proof of warming. In a world of Davos elite globalism, coupled with media and government being joined at the hip, the narrative requires that you believe, not that you think. 

Back in 2014, I blogged on a great example of how the media and global government runs this scam. 

In 2010, Scientific American let us know that Lake Superior reaching record high surface temps was evidence that even deniers could really not deny. The record was 68 degrees F, and it was breached: 

"The Great Lakes in a lot of ways have always been a canary in the coal mine," Cameron Davis, the senior adviser to the U.S. EPA on the Great Lakes, said last week. "Not just for the region or this country, but for the rest of the world."

Given the record cold temps in TX, I decided to look at how much increase in the maximum temp for the big lake there has been since my blog entry. The peak for 2020 was 65 degrees F ... so the lake COOLED 3 degrees. In 2014, the max was 58.3 F. It appears that like many things in this world, "it varies" ... and quite quickly.

I'm certain that given the right selection of starting dates, statistical massaging, etc, it can be shown that the lake is still warming. Like much in today's world, are you going to believe "the experts", "the science", or your own lying eyes? Increasingly, you may well be Cancelled, fired, etc for choosing the latter. It is "deplorable" (even painful) to think in today's world. 

In actual science, if your theoretical predictions turn out to be wrong, that means your theory is wrong. Sadly, as with our response to Covid, we no longer admit to the experts/theories/projections/models being wrong, so we get dumber rather than smarter. 

They Came For Kermit, But I Was Not A Muppet

 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/public-confessions

As I read the linked, the Marxist / Progressive / Whiggish idea of "the right side of history" kept flitting through my brain.

This article does a reasonable job of debunking the idea of history having "sides". 

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it imputes an agency to history that doesn’t exist. Worse, it assumes that progress is unidirectional. But history is not a moral force in and of itself, and it has no set course. Presuming otherwise embraces the dangerous tendency that the great English historian Herbert Butterfield dissected in his 1931 essay, The Whig Interpretation of History. Butterfield was writing about the inclination among certain historians to see the Reformation as a unalloyedly positive force—a secularizing, liberalizing movement that led inexorably to liberal democracy in the 20th century. Butterfield objected that this wasn’t at all how things worked. It was just a retrospective reading.

The philosophical term for  this thought is eschatology, thus giving rise to a somewhat common intellectual conservative criticism of liberalism/progressivism as "immanentizing the eschaton". Marxism, Christianity and Progressivism often assume an inevitable "arc of history" to a wonderful final end. With Marxism and Progressivism, "the end/goal" is some sort of hazy  "utopia", with Christianity it is the return of Christ.

Wokeism and Cancel Culture believe that they are part of this inevitable march. 

Last Friday, [February 5, 2021] Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science reporter for The New York Times since 1976, and one of the mainstays of the paper’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic—a matter of life and death for millions of people around the planet—was forced to leave the paper. “Dean and Joe” (Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor, and Joe Kahn, managing editor) announced to Times staffers that McNeil had cited a racial slur in a conversation with two high school students, and therefore had to go, since “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent” (italics mine; I will come back to those words later).

McNiel ran afoul of the "Woke/Cancel" culture, because he had used "the N-word" in reference to someone else being suspended for using "the N-word". It offended people, so he had to go -- offence is in the mind of the offended, that is the only "standard" in exactly the same way as "sexual harassment" is proven if the "victim" feels "harassed/offended", the "perpetrator" has to go. 

The top link goes into more specific depth of the parallels of "Wokeism" to Stalinism. 

This all seems so bizarre that it is hard to take is seriously, but they came for Kermit! If you are not a Muppet, you may feel secure, but if they can get Kermit, is anyone really safe? 

The Whiteness Whale

 https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being/

We hear a lot about the evils of "whiteness" in these days of "wokeness". It is human nature to prefer "like" -- we are social beings with our natural urge being to prefer those most like us (our family), our community (the country mouse and the city mouse), our profession, and on and on. We by nature prefer our "group/identity". Historically, "Americans", or "Christians" were large groupings that superseded most other "identities". In the Civil War, "Northerner" and "Southerner" became identities that superseded being "American", with the results being less than optimal. 

 Identity politics seeks to divide on many factors -- race, sex, wealth, etc. The "old ideas" of things like Western civilization, the Constitution, the two parent family, Christianity are "white, racist, sexist, etc" ... BAD! The goal of identity politics is to divide and conquer. 

In the view of the left, this human "preference for same" is a beautiful thing when it used by people "people of color" or other approved "identities" ( women, gays, trans, etc ). Increasingly since the late 1980's, the concept of "whiteness" is a new branding of old terms like "conservative, Christian, or Republican". (for the left, all synonyms for "bad") 

Here is a discussion from the linked. 

The notion of whiteness emerged from debates among academic leftists near the end of the Reagan/Bush era. They were wrestling with the old American political anomaly: why working-class whites supposedly voted against their own interests by failing to embrace socialism. The recent appearance of Reagan Democrats and growing working-class support for the Republican Party had been a particularly galling development. Alexander Saxton’s The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (1990), followed closely by David R. Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991), attempted to tackle this “problem” with a new perspective. “Whiteness,” each book claimed in its own way, explained all.

I like the idea of "Whiteness" as a "white whale" (and I hope it is as unsuccessful as Ahab) . I see Whiteness as an obsessive desire to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. 

Whiteness, according to this pervasive left-wing narrative, inspires and shapes all problems in the United States, which therefore must be relentlessly racialized in order to root whiteness out. As one critic who accuses Greek and Roman classical texts of undergirding a Western civilization of racial repression recently put it, “Classics and whiteness are the bone and sinew of the same body; they grew strong together and they may have to die together.” To such ends a flotilla of progressive Ahabs grimly pursues the whale of whiteness into every inlet and channel of American life with political harpoons poised and ready to strike.

"Whiteness" is more or less a new version of the old cry of "racism" -- it is another all purpose smear that can be thrown at anyone at any time, and if they complain it is not a valid charge, that is tacit admission that the charge is valid!  

"Dog Whistle Politics" gives a good description of the "White privilege / racist" attack. Whiteness is just newer and more generic.