Following the Party Line at the Museum

 

Last week Debby and I went to an exhibit at the Kimbell museum of Dutch art from the great days of the Dutch republic, with most of the paintings and prints coming from a museum in Boston. It was magnificent. Anyone who can should take in the exhibit. We went twice.

However, the notes accompanying the paintings are better skipped if one is interested in art instead of dulling, repetitive, irrelevant, woke sermonizing. A beautiful painting of ships is attached to a note reminding readers that some sailing ships were used to transport slaves. A still life of luxury items has a note about slaves or exploited locals in some of the countries where the items originated, and so on and on and on.

What is appropriate in a history book or seminar is not at an art exhibit. In an art exhibit it is both jarring and distracting and an example of how pernicious and pervasive the critical race/DEI stuff is and of how hostile it is to Western civilization. I doubt that an exhibit of artifacts from ancient Egypt curated by the same writers would be accompanied repeatedly reminders that the pyramids were not built by skilled union labor or that notes accompanying an exhibit of Chinese art would dwell on the prevalence of slavery in China throughout its history or that an exhibit of Indian sculpture would feature commentary on the evils of the caste system.

So, go to the exhibit. Skip over the notes. And maybe drop the people at the museum a text or email saying what they are doing is wrong, because it is. And people should speak up. We and our civilization do not have to take this lying down.

Fun with Pronouns

 A person does not have to go far on TV or the internet, even among sites of large news companies, to find enough bad diction, awkward phrasing, lousy grammar, and poor choices of words to earn a failing grade from a moderately strict mid-century sophomore English teacher. Stephen Cox at Liberty has written several amusing pieces full of examples. Historians have written that people such as Petrarch compared the inferior Latin writing of their day harshly to the fine Latin of writers from the time of Virgil and Cicero. One can see something similar by reading not only the works of good or great authors but also compositions such as letters and military reports written by ordinary educated people in the 19^th Century and comparing them to what passes for English prose in lots of places these days. As Mr. Ed - who handled the language better than many present day journalists – might have said, it’s pathetic, Wilbur.

Then there are the pronouns. The distinction between singular and plural is important, and the English language uses different pronouns to denote it. Until recently that was a noncontroversial and well understood notion not only among grammarians but also among literate people in general. It still should be. If people want gender neutral singular pronouns, they do not have to hijack “they” and “them”. English has a perfectly good one in “it”. For example, while there really is nothing wrong with saying “a person should be careful when he pays taxes” when one means a person of either sex, it can be avoided by one who wants to do so by using “he or she” or following the the convention of male authors using “he” and female authors using “she” or alternating the two from time to time. Those enthusiasts comfortable only with full neutrality who find such solutions unsatisfactory can say “a person should be careful when it pays taxes”. That sounds funny, but it is less bad than “a person should be careful when they pay taxes”. There is no need to be semi-literate to be politically correct.

Using “it” could help with other things as well. It does the job with individuals who wish to avoid “he” or “she” because they call themselves “gender fluid” or claim to be of some invented non-biological gender or genders, making such things as “xe” and “xir” and so on unnecessary. Relying on “it” is just a good way to go all around for those seeking neutrality.

It ain’t hard.

Calling Alfred E. Newman

 One of the best educational advantages boomers enjoyed in their youth was exposure to the old Mad magazine. It taught its readers, among other things,  that a lot of commercial advertising was shifty, silly, dishonest stuff aimed at fools,  deserving of ridicule,  and not to be taken seriously.  Much of it still is.

The latest inane trend is woke advertising. Sometimes it is explicit as when viewers or readers are told that the XYZ company not only makes darned fine crotch itch ointment but honors LBGTQ and BIPOC communities, is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is striving to remake the world in service of those things.  More often it is less direct. It sometimes is done by the selection of the models and images in the ad on the basis of race, as  though seeing a black person in a commercial is supposed to make a viewer think the advertised company is in the vanguard of something or other. Black people make up around an eighth of the population of the country but lately seem to be about half of the actors in TV commercials, and probably more than half of the so-called authority figures such as people playing doctors or scientists or executives in commercials. This is good news for black actors, but one has to guess many of them might feel a little patronized by people who had little use for them in the past becoming interested only as they became handy symbols.

One place black people are “under represented” in commercials is in ads for things such as burglar alarm companies. There one can be pretty sure the crooks will be white guys – often oddly enough white guys dressed like Nancy’s boyfriend Sluggo but with a mask.  Indeed  in the world of commercials, white men are life’s losers. The clueless ones, the stupid ones, the ones who never get the word usually will be white men. In a commercial featuring a white man in a domestic setting, he probably will be washing, cooking, cuddling a child and generally coming across as a good little homemaker. If there is an unlikeable or out of touch guy in a suit in a commercial, he usually will be white. Women and black men may be portrayed as strong and independent, but mainly not the white guys.

  Many conservatives find this depiction of white men wrong, insulting, utterly unrealistic, and demeaning. They are right. It is, but it’s usually not worth getting too worked up over. It is just a fad, and one that does little real harm since few take its implications seriously (and it is not as though people in other groups have not been given the same treatment and worse at various times). I think it is better most of the time for white guys to ignore it or laugh it off.  Of course if ticked off enough or if the insults are presented as something to take seriously, they also can refuse to buy the product being advertised. A few more cases of get woke, go broke might shorten the fad’s duration.   They certainly would serve some people right.

 

 

Funny Movies

 

Puritanism -The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

- H. L. Mencken

 

One hears all the time that Blazing Saddles (or Airplane or Animal House or Caddyshack or Young Frankenstein or Dr. Strangelove or Smokey and the Bandit or many others) could not be made today. It is probably true. We are in a prudish and puritanical time. It is interesting to remember that such films could not have been made much earlier than they were either.

Restrictions come in various forms – including direct government censorship (which is supposed to be illegal in this country), pressure from self-proclaimed defenders of public morality, and so-called self regulation  done as appeasement. Before the 1960s movie makers faced all three. State and local governments prohibited the showing of films on forbidden topics. The Catholic legion of decency and other pressure groups pushed filmmakers to avoid themes and content they considered immoral. The movie industry’s  trade association enforced  the Motion Picture Production Code which specified what was allowed and what was forbidden in movies. These days there are no production code and no censorship from American governments, but the pressure from the defenders of morality is pervasive and intense. Feminist, race hustling, LBGTQ, green, multicultural, “progressive”, and various other woke puritans are on full alert in social and other media to try to make sure that no one, anywhere in the movies is having any good, raucous, politically incorrect fun. They are as dogmatic and seem to be just about as successful with the movie industry as the other legionnaires of decency were in the old days.

Those of us who like that sort of fun can be glad there was a long period between one bunch of prudes losing power and another one gaining it. We can also be glad that for now at least, funny films from those days are still available. However it might be a good idea not to count on that remaining true. Streaming services seem like good targets for pressure to stop offering content someone deems inappropriate. I’d recommend a person going ahead and get copies of the stuff he likes  on his own media in his physical possession just in case.  The forces of decency are on the march.

It is an interesting aside that the puritans in the saddle today and the successors of the ones who were in the past generally despise and would like to cancel each other. There are amusing irony and useful lessons in that, but I doubt if many in either group would see them.

 

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Victims and Victims

Whatever one thinks about the appropriateness of the lock downs over  the epidemic, it is indisputable that they produced real victims – people whose businesses or livelihoods  were damaged or ruined,  dying people in nursing homes who spent their last days alone because they were locked away from their family and friends, sick people left to suffer because the surgery they needed was banned as elective, children  who coped  poorly with the disruption of their lives’ routines, and many others.

There are also phony victims – officials responsible for shutdowns with sad tales of being triggered by “hateful” criticism from unruly subjects rude enough not to like being pushed around.  As one example a transsexual official in Pennsylvania has made national news and gained sympathetic attention in the traditional media by whining that some people who don’t like the way the lock down has gone in that state have been mean by failing to respect that fact that he prefers to be seen as a woman, even going so far as to ridicule his pretense and call him “sir”.  That may have been bad manners.  It may have been rude, counterproductive, and beside the point of opposing  the lock down.  But that is all it was.  It did not make him a victim, any more than being called a fat lunatic makes Trump a victim.

I will save my sympathy for the real victims, and let the thin skinned politicians and bureaucrats suffer as they may.  It is healthy for the country for people to treat politicians and bureaucrats  as a class as objects of ridicule.  Besides Truman was right about heat and kitchens.

Help with Packaging

In  the last few days various companies have changed or announced plans to change the names of some of their products in response to demands from Black Lives Matter and other leftist groups. Clearly the products will need new names.  In the spirit of going along and avoiding divisiveness, I have some suggestions.

The first one is easy. Replace the picture of a black man on Uncle Ben’s rice packages with one  of Stalin and call it Uncle Joe’s rice.  Featuring one of their favorites  in that way should earn the rice company all sorts of praise from BLM, Antifa, and a good number of Democrats and media people.  Coming up with a replacement for Aunt Jemima is a little harder, but I think Auntie Eva, in honor of Eva Braun might work.  She is not that well known anymore, but she decidedly wasn’t a person of color, and she was the partner of a famous vegan activist and advocate for strong vigorous government  and the politics of direct physical action. That could be a good sop to the Antifa crowd.  For Eskimo Pie the company could replace the picture of the Eskimo on the ice cream bar  with one of a happy, re-educated inmate of the Gulag and call  it a Kolyma Freeze. Of course they would have to check and make sure Ben and Jerry hadn’t trademarked the name already.  

The Disney company is also making some changes. They need something to replace the Uncle Remus characters on  the splash mountain ride. I don’t have a good idea here. They could use the characters from Animal Farm, cuted up and slanted properly,  but I doubt that would really work. Somebody might have read the book. Orwell is so problematic.

Local Trouble

A policeman in our town has gotten in trouble for something he posted on Facebook about the riots and demonstrations going on around the country.  He is of course guilty of  first degree foolishness.  No one whose career depends on the whims of politicians, bureaucrats, or corporate weasels should post anything on Facebook   that can be interpreted as being about a black person or some black people  (or Muslims  and usually homosexuals and sometimes Hispanics) other than “They are  the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human beings  I’ve ever known in my life”, or the equivalent.

However, if the version of his post printed on the local newspaper’s website is accurate,  that seems to be all he is guilty of. He wrote that demonstrations across the country begin peacefully and lawfully and then are over run by trash “trying to start crap.”  The wording may be crude, but  rioters, looters, and arsonists have moved in with the demonstrations in many cities, and “trash” is a mild enough term for such vandals.  He then wrote that something similar happened at a local demonstration – saying that after a while “east side rabble” showed up, displaced some of the peaceful demonstrators,  and began chanting  “fuck the police”.   Well, a mob of people shouting such things can properly be called a  rabble, and if they came from the east side of town,  one could see how he could call them  what he did without intending any disparagement based on race. In fact he never mentioned any race or ethnic group in the post.

He’ll probably be fired anyway. Then he can  sue and get to share a big payoff with his lawyer. The citizens will foot the bill, but our sensitive, inclusive civil masters will have been able to signal all sorts of virtue, which should make us all feel better.

Chicken Hearted

As a legal matter marriage  is the creation of a legal entity the members of which receive benefits and incur costs and liabilities they would not have otherwise – similar to the creation of an LLC. (Of course most people who marry see the act as much more - as a  profound declaration of affection and commitment  -  but that is something apart from law and government.)  It seems reasonable and equitable to me that marriages between homosexual couples are given the same treatment and recognition by governments as those between heterosexual couples.

Many religious people disagree. They believe that the institution of marriage is of divine origin, that a marriage must meet some doctrinal requirements  including being between a man and a woman, and  that governments should accept those requirements in deciding what to treat as a marriage. This does not mean that they are bigoted against homosexuals, though some are. It means only that they take their creed seriously as in a free country they have a right to do and as in a civil country they would be able to do without fear of ostracism.

The Chick-fil-A company has been attacked over the years because it and its founder have supported Christian organizations favoring the legality of only traditional marriages.  There have been actions by politicians in some cities to keep the company’s stores out of places in their jurisdiction and at least one serious attempt at a boycott. The boycott failed completely because the company’s loyal customers, many of whom share its founder’s opinions, made a point of patronizing a Chick-fil-A store  at the time.

I do not like to see anyone intimidated by political correctness’s would-be thought police, and I am surely sick of watching gutless corporate weasels cave in and crawl on their bellies out of fear of criticism from a few obnoxious twits on social media.  In the past  and irrespective of whether one agreed with their opinions, it was easy to admire the people running  Chick-fil-A  for sticking to their guns and standing up against the pressure.  Now it is hard not to see them as just another bunch of craven  corporate weasels.

This week executives at the company announced their foundation would no longer give money to the Salvation Army or the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  I know nothing about the activities of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but the Salvation Army does good charitable work all over the country and is admired for it by many people whether or not they agree with its religious beliefs.  (As an aside I  would guess that the Salvation Army provides more charity to needy homosexuals in a week than the entire LBGT social media mob’s members do in a year.)  There was some stuff from the company about refocusing  the activities of the foundation toward homeless people and other  things, but it seemed fairly obvious that the decision was made and promoted to placate critics. After all it is  odd that a foundation announcing its intention to focus on helping homeless people would simultaneously dump the organization that is doing more than any other to help homeless people.

Besides being wrong, the action is stupid. It won’t appease the company’s enemies. It will only make them more aggressive by showing Chick-fil-A can be had. It will offend and sadden customers and others who had stood by Chick-fil-A.  It is not as bad as what Gillette did. The people running Chick-fil-A are not directly  spitting in their customers’  faces as with  Gillette. They are more spitting in their own faces, and that is bad enough. 

Okay Here

Years ago when my daughter was attending the government schools in our town, some particularly obtuse bureaucrats from the school district sent parents a list of  banned symbols that kids could not display on themselves or their clothing at school.  They were supposed to be logos of gangs or cultists  or  something the  officials  at the central office were against.  I don’t remember exactly what. I do remember that one of the symbols was the Star of David. Some of us thought that was a little odd even for  educators and raised a stink about it.  It has been a while, but I think the result was that the list got revised.

I thought about that recently in light of a present day controversy.  In the United States the gesture of making a circle with the thumb and index finger and holding up the other three fingers means “okay” and has meant that for decades, as sensible and informed people know. Now however we hear the thought police of political correctness  are demanding that it be prohibited because some insignificant – numerically and otherwise – losers are said to use the same gesture to signify support for “white supremacy”.

I do not know if that is true, but I do know it does not matter, any more than if those numbskull school administrators of long ago had been able to point to a gang or cult that badged itself with a six pointed star. The assertion is absurd,  and we have had too much of this bullying absurdity from the left. People need to stand up to it in small matters as well as large. The proper response here is laugh the lefties off rudely and reject the demand cheerfully but forcefully. A less proper but still acceptable response  would be to retort with  another well-known and nearly universally understood hand gesture.

Happy Columbus Day

We should wish each other a happy Columbus Day, and gives the leftists’ “indigenous people’s day” the derisive horse laugh it deserves.  It does not matter that there were other explorers such as Cabot and Hudson who did important things, or that the Vikings found the New World centuries before 1492. It does not matter that the Spaniards’ behavior in the areas of Latin America they conquered and colonized was at best bad and often utterly barbarous (though still  usually  some  improvement over savagery of the Aztecs and others).  It does not matter that the English and Dutch settlements  in  what would become the United States  came over a century after Columbus’s voyages and were made  by people who were enemies of Spanish empire Columbus served.

For in the context of the  American holiday, Columbus is a symbol of daring, bold exploration,  the value of Western Civilization, and the chain of events leading to the creation of the United States. That is what Columbus Day honors. That explains why the leftists despise it, and why the rest of us can celebrate it happily.     

Not the Glory Days of the NFL

This week football players in the NFL were again kneeling, raising fists, or otherwise acting badly while the national anthem was playing before their games. The people running the league had considered prohibiting  such  behavior before the season started but decided to back off.  This is more evidence against the notion that executives in the entertainment businesses care only about money and make their decisions solely  to maximize revenue.

It is usually not a good idea to spit in someone’s face before asking him to continue purchasing your product so you can remain  rich.  However that is what the NLF and the players  did and likely will keep doing. In the context of the tradition of playing the anthem at the beginning of sporting events, the players’  actions are obviously gestures of disrespect and for the country and contempt for most of the people in it.

Most of those who applaud  this stuff probably are not football fans, and most football fans probably  dislike it, many  to the point of stopping watching.  Yet those in charge in the  NFL continue to allow it. It could be the bosses worry more about offending the players than about driving their customers away. It could be the result of  a desire to fit in with and be approved by the leftist traditional media, including the sports media. It could be the usual corporate cowardice in the face of the demands of political correctness.  It could be that  people such as Goodell do not care any  more for America or most Americans than the hateful players  do.  Whatever it is, it is not a decision driven by  the bottom line.  That is what makes it interesting.

Anyway, fall is a nice season in most of the country, and there are plenty of pleasant ways for former fans of the NFL to spend an autumn Sunday afternoon.

Useful Information from the New York Times

It should be obvious that racism or  racial bigotry is wrong in itself, irrespective of whether the bigot has any way to act on it.  Powerlessness does not absolve anything. The racial  ideas expressed in Mein Kampf would have would have been no less wrong if the author had never found a publisher for it and had died an unknown alcoholic paper hanger.  It should also be  trivially obvious that there are politically powerless white people and people of other races in politically powerful positions.

It should be obvious but it isn’t to everyone. Many leftists disagree. So the best thing about the case of  Sarah Jeong, her racially bigoted writings about white people, and the New York Times  is that it  has drawn attention  to the leftists’ dangerous doctrine that anti-white bigotry is not really bigotry because its  target is fair game, and that only white people can be bigoted because only they have power in society. It is good for people, especially for those in the targeted group,  to come to understand that a good many American leftists believe that it is okay or even necessary to hate and disparage some people because of the color of their skin.  People  should not laugh this off as the rantings of a few insignificant losers. It is more than that. The Times seems to  accept it. (The paper almost certainly would not have hired someone who had written that stuff about any non-white racial or ethnic group.) It is implicit in the set of double standards of political correctness and in the notion of racial identity politics.  It shows up ever more frequently in the Democratic Party, the entertainment industry, and the traditional media.

This is not good news, but it is news Americans, white or otherwise, should pay attention to.  I am glad the people at the Times dropped the mask and showed how things really stand.  One lesson for all from the 20^th Century is that when people say they hate you and want you destroyed, it is prudent to take them at their word.

As an aside, the Times's  claim that Jeong’s writings  were excusable as overwrought  responses to rude posts directed at her is nonsense.  Her attacks were on white people as such not rejoinders aimed at particular people who may have offended her.  

Straws

An observation attributed, perhaps inaccurately, to Yogi Berra: “you can observe a lot by watching.”

It is hard to argue with that. It is also true that sometimes you can observe something useful by paying attention to things which, on the surface, seem too silly to be worth watching. In the last couple of weeks some  politicians and  self-styled  activists have  been on a crusade against plastic straws. Governments in several cities have banned the things (with at least one making offering a person one a jailing offense), and a sorry troupe of weak kneed corporate executives  at Marriott, Disney, and other outfits have taken the pledge and promised that lips that touch straws will never touch theirs.

The natural first reaction is to write or laugh this off as just one more absurdity of a fairly mad world.  No sensible person cares what sort of straw his neighbor drinks through. But there are plenty of obnoxious  busybodies  who seem to live to force their puritanical  desires of the moment on  their fellow citizens without regard to fact, cost, or anyone’s rights. They flit from cause to cause and sometimes get what they want from obliging officials.  It may be that the poor plastic straw industry is  the more or less randomly selected target of the day and  one unlucky enough to be hit with a bullseye. This could just be  a case of what Governor Lepetomane came up with next. There is always that. 

However there could be more to it. The idea of taking to the barricades or passing laws  over somebody sipping a coke or  latte through a straw belongs in a low farce or an  over the top political satire.  Even a few months ago  people would have hooted at the suggestion it might happen. Yet  politicians have embraced and acted on this one quickly and strongly. It is worth guessing why.  It could be that its absurdity is one of the things leftist politicians find attractive about it. If your  purpose requires getting people in the habit of obedience, forcing something on them that both you and they know makes no sense and has the potential to annoy  them to boot can make a lot of sense.  

Einstein's "Racism"

Looking at the news this morning, I noticed an article accusing Einstein of racism because of some observations he made in his diary about his travels in Asia.  If, as it seems reasonable to guess, the comments mentioned in the article are the harshest things he wrote, the accusations are false. If one were to consider racism in its literal sense as a  belief that members of some groups are intrinsically superior or inferior because of their membership in the group, the accusations would be manifestly absurdly false.  So  one may assume the accusers are using the term in the popular loose sense of any manifestation of racial bigotry or prejudice.  There one should remember that just as truth is a  defense against charges of libel,  it is a defense against charges of bigotry or prejudice. If someone says something about a group of people that is true, he may be motivated by bigotry or prejudice in doing so, but anyone accusing him of it should bear the burden of proving it on the basis of something beyond the assertion itself. 

Einstein wrote that Chinese peasants behaved in a docile manner after observing them behaving docilely.  He noted that the Chinese are a fecund people, a fact attested to by China’s  being then and now the most populous nation on the planet.  He concluded it would  be dreary if the Chinese culture of that time supplanted all others.  Few if any of those attacking him would find it otherwise. He said the peasants of Ceylon were challenged in terms of hygiene and able to get by in their climate with little effort after seeing them being dirty and getting by with little effort. The comments quoted about the Japanese were laudatory or neutral. 

So the stuff  I’ve read contains nothing to indicate Einstein was a bigot,  but the reactions to it may give support to the notion that a good many journalists and twitter-ites are morons.   

A Question of Manners

The political questions around the so-called   trans issues are fairly easy, at least for libertarians. If adults wish to pretend to be of the opposite sex or have themselves surgically or hormonally altered to more nearly resemble the opposite sex, it is their business.  If other people wish to consider their behavior praiseworthy, daring, wonderful, evil, sinful, stupid, crazy, delusional, or a matter of indifference, that is their business.  As to the bathroom controversy, each private owner of restrooms should be free completely   to make his own decisions leaving  government organizations to make rules only about facilities on their  property on the basis of the usual interplay of political pressures, inducements, payoffs,  and threats.

That leaves  the (for libertarians) non-political question of how one should behave  – the question of what one should do to be decent and mannerly.  The politically correct answer favored by people in the traditional media is  that one should go along completely with the pretense or delusion and  treat and refer to men who say they are women and women who say they are men as  though their claims were true. (Some go beyond this and claim one should also believe the claims are true.)

I think that is wrong. Good manners do not require saluting someone who says he is Napoleon or genuflecting before  a person who claims to be Jesus or Mohammed. Neither do they require one to treat and  consider a  Caitlyn Jenner as a  woman when he is not or to treat and consider a  Chaz Bono as a man when she is not. Of course there is no reason to be unnecessarily rude about it. Most of the time  the whole business can be ignored easily.  In this as in many other things, minding your  own business and keeping your  judgments to yourself as appropriate tend to work well in social situations. However  there is no requirement to accept or pretend to accept something false as true because someone wishes you would or would be offended if you didn’t.  For people who try to be intellectually honest, there is a requirement not to do so.

Intimidation

While looking at a news site this morning,  I noticed that a movie star is being castigated on social media as an “ableist” for her kind tweet wishing Stephen Hawking to rest in peace and saying he is now free of physical constraints.  This  is unimportant in itself.  Anyone taking offense from her comment or not recognizing that being crippled is indeed constraining likely suffers from another sort of disability – being a fool. The movie star will either properly  ignore or laugh off the criticism or cave in and tweet some sort of craven apology. However it and the fact that it made national news are a fine illustration of something that is worth noticing.  Lacking the political power they had when Obama was in office, leftists are working, often successfully,  at getting their way and enforcing their orthodoxy  through intimidation.

Intimidation can be a powerful tool that can be used to gain obedience from people over whom the intimidators have no actual power.  It works well on people who are unsure of themselves or guilt ridden and works especially well on moral cowards. On a good deal of evidence this last group apparently  includes a large percentage of executives in big corporations.

A  recent example is the rush by companies to end relationships with the NRA after a deranged criminal shot several students at a school in Florida.  The NRA stands for exactly the same principles and policies after the shooting as it had for years before it. The fact that criminals sometimes use guns to shoot several people at once was well known.  The millions of  members of the NRA are as desirable a target for marketing as they were earlier.  Yet the executives of many companies  joined the stampede, not because of anything of substance but seemingly only because they were scared – scared by a log rolling blitz in the traditional media and a few tweets and emails, many probably fake. This behavior is not unusual.

There are a couple of things people who care about the country can do.  They can speak their minds fearlessly,  refuse to accept undeserved guilt, and either ignore would  be enforcers of the canons of political correctness or tell them to go to hell, depending on situation.  They can also take advantage of the cowardice of  executives by putting the same sort of pressure on them through social media and other means that the leftists are doing. (I cancelled a credit card with First National of Omaha over their behavior on the NRA and told them why in writing.) That does not come naturally to those who are used to minding their own business and letting others mind theirs, but the leftists picked this fight and its rules.  

A Good Comic Book Gone Bad

NCIS Los Angeles is not really a drama or a dramatic adventure program. It is more a televised  version of what these days is grandiosely called a graphic novel, i.e. a long comic book.  With its outlandish  plots,  slam bang action, and colorful characters  with interesting origins or backgrounds, it has often been a very good comic book.  It has been one of only two or three network TV shows  that I have enjoyed watching. However I think I’ve had just about enough since comic books are better taken straight and unadulterated by political correctness. 

It was bad enough when a suspect’s high moral character was attested to based on her support for the Occupy Wall Street gang, but that was a while back and only a single incident.  Then a week or two ago an obnoxious under cover persona assumed by one of the characters was criticized as an example of white privilege. I  did not care for the gratuitous insult from that term and the claims and attitudes behind it to me, my wife, daughter, and grandchildren, most of the rest of my family and friends, and over two hundred million other Americans who do not deserve to be spit on. 

Last night on the show in a plot worthy of Lex Luthor or the Joker, a group of villains took over a group of ICBM silos and planed to launch the missiles and start a world war.   However these evil doers were all clean cut, ROTC trained, Air Force officers whose right wing politics had led them to decide to win the war on terror by nuking Mecca and most of the large Muslim-populated cities around the world.  There was even an evil professor – not quite a mad scientist, but close -  who had recruited  these malefactors based on their scoring as right wingers on some sort of survey of political attitudes.

We libertarians generally don’t buy the left/right political spectrum nonsense.  (We prefer a model ranking governments and political systems based on the degree to which they favor or oppose the liberal notions of liberty and individual rights, one  that places Nazis and Communists, and fascists and socialists together as opponents of liberty rather than as opposites who coincidentally behave in the same ways as each other.) However in the present political context in this country, “right wing” means conservative, and by making their genocidal maniacs right wingers, the show was smearing conservatives – pointedly, needlessly, and self-righteously.  

The conservatives have their faults, but  they don’t deserve that. It’s just dirty.  Besides, as the saying goes, some of my best friends are conservatives. So I think I may give the show a pass for a while.   

Nuts

“The Man who cannot afford to Speak his Thought is a Certificate of the Meanness of the Community in which he Resides”  -  Robert Ingersoll

Even in this country protected by the First Amendment and a with a strong tradition of upholding freedom of expression, there have been continuing attempts over time  and often successful ones to restrict or stifle free speech. Most of them fall into one or two classes – direct suppression by violence, mob action,  or law and suppression through intimidation by social pressures and threats of financial consequences or ostracism.  Blasphemy and obscenity statutes, Wilson’s imprisonment of dissenters during World War I,  and beatings and tarring and featherings of unpopular speakers are historical examples of the former.  The pressures on non-religious people in universities, most small towns, and many large ones well into the 20^th  Century not to let their opinions be known  are examples of the latter. 

The serious threats and attacks of the present time come from the American left.  It is fairly clear from things which have been said and written that many leftists actively and seriously want to prohibit discussion or advocacy of political or ethical opinions they dislike and that many more are at least willing for it to happen.  They try both methods, but apart from some college campuses and a few towns such as Berkeley where authorities cooperate with gangs of thugs to shut down speech and speakers the authorities don’t like, this is still a free enough country that the direct approach is not going to work very often. They are having much more success with the second method.  The canons and restrictions of so-called political correctness have become the rule in government, the traditional media, and many large companies and organizations of all sort  and have metastasized  throughout much of society to the point that  in a recent poll 58% of Americans said they were afraid to say what they really think.

In a column a few days age,  Robert Tracinski emphasized that social intimidation works only of a person allows himself to be intimidated.  If one stands up and says he does not give a damn if some or all  on the left sneer at him, call him some sort of “ist”,  lie about him, mischaracterize what he says, or label him as uncool, there is really nothing they can do about it. People need to realize that and enjoy the sense of liberation it can bring.

Of course there are people such as employees of Google, commentators at ESPN, actors, untenured professors,  and people with jobs  in  governments or many large corporations who would risk damage to their careers if they were caught deviating from the party line. One should admire those who dissent while understanding why many do not.  That leaves the rest of us (and especially the retired among us whose livelihoods the would be thought police literally cannot damage at all)  with the task to say what we think whenever we find it appropriate without worry or self-censorship  and  to be especially vigorous in opposing and repelling  the left’s attempts intimidation.

There is no need to be too rude or vulgar about  one’s opposition, just firm and clear and harsh enough. In December of 1944 German forces had units of the 101^st Airborne Division surrounded in Bastogne in Belgium.  Under a flag of truce two German officers and a couple of enlisted men brought  General Anthony McAuliffe, the American commander, an insulting written demand for surrender. McAuliffe’s  written reply was the one word  “nuts”.  As the Germans left the American positions, two American soldiers explained in German and English  to the German officers who were not up on American slang that it meant “go to hell.”  That is about right here for the lefties. Nuts to them.

Statues of Confederates

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

- Memoirs of Ulysses. S. Grant, describing his feelings at Appomattox

In the last few years governments in several cities have removed or hidden statues honoring confederate soldiers.   In some places schools and streets which were named for rebels have been renamed.  Some people applaud this as appropriate while others see it as an example of dogmatic  political correctness, a denial of historical fact, or even a desecration of their heritage. 

Before deciding whether it was proper to honor people such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, or Jeb Stuart,  one has to know what  they were being honored for. Lee was an admirable man  and a skilled, formidable,  valiant, and determined commander.   So were some other confederate officers.  Many ordinary confederate soldiers fought bravely and gallantly,  often in very  trying or even desperate conditions.   It is entirely appropriate to respect and admire them for these qualities and deeds.  However these men committed treason against the United States, and the cause they fought for was not merely wrong but despicable.  

To  me the most relevant question on the statues and monuments is  whether they  were intended and serve only or mainly to commemorate historical events and/or honor confederate soldiers  for what they did in the war or more as acts of  defiance and to promote their indefensible lost cause.   The monuments I’ve seen at places such as  Shiloh and Gettysburg  are usually the former and should be left alone, while many of those in city  parks and squares probably were done as the latter.  While I see no necessity for removing them, neither do I see anything wrong with doing so.  I’d certainly rather have statues of Grant or Sherman or Sheridan or others who were on the right side.

Anti-Defamation League

I got a mailing from the Anti-Defamation League today asking for a donation.  It accurately warned  about the increasing danger of anti-Semitism and rightly pointed to the need  to oppose it and to the ADL’s record of success in opposing anti-Semitism in the past.  However it led me to worry how successful the league will be in the future.

 It is an obvious and well understood truism that one must identify an enemy or threat before one can defeat  or neutralize it.   The serious  anti-Semitism in the  world today comes from jihadist Muslims and from leftists in America and Europe among whom fashionable anti-Zionism and multiculturalism have  led to acceptance of or   become mixed with stealthy or overt anti-Semitism.  Jew hating Muslims are the only large group in the world who have the means and have expressed the desire to  kill large numbers of Jews.  In this country the Democrats are the only large political organization which tolerates vocal anti-Semites among its local and national leaders and spokesmen.

Yet the mailing from ADL ignores all of that and focuses on the few insignificant and powerless Klansmen, white supremacists,  and wanna be Nazis who show up in the news from time to time. There was a time when people such as these were a threat. The Klan almost took over the Democratic party in the 1920s, and the Bund was something to worry about in the 1930s.  However that is no longer  true.  As the joke goes, there are probably more Americans who think they have been abducted by aliens  than who think they are Klansmen.  The white supremacists are generally despised or ignored by people of all races, and the pretend Nazis are laughed off as sadly deranged and pathetic losers.

It is of course easier to stick with these safe targets.  Identifying and mentioning the serious  threats would require violating rules of politically correctness, and that would take nerve. But I don’t see how the ADL can be successful without doing so – any more than someone could expect to be successful  in crusading to prevent lung cancer while being afraid to mention smoking.