I can’t remember when I last wrote a book report! I’m a big fan of Thomas Sowell, and I’ve been buying up his audiobooks on Audible whenever they’re having a 2 for 1 sale. Compared to some of his other titles, I wasn’t super excited about Intellectuals and Society, but even the least interesting sounding book from Dr. Sowell has to be ten times better than the drivel Audible usually recommends for me. 
Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society
Generally, I find Thomas Sowell’s writing a bit repetitive. He uses the same examples and phrases extensively through any writing he does, and it becomes a bit boring. I don’t know whether this is a problem with the audiobook format or whether reading the book would result in the same boredom. Either way, it’s usually just small pockets of repetition sprinkled in generally great writing.
In Intellectuals and Society, Dr. Sowell takes aim at “professional” intellectuals: those academicians, politicians, “journalists,” advocates, and public-facing social engineers that steer society from “on high.” Early in the book, Sowell outlined two different worldviews, the “tragic” worldview that views life as a series of minute tradeoffs versus the “anointed” worldview that views life as a top-down progression toward perfection. On a high level, he equates the “anointed” view with big-government liberalism and the “tragic” view with small-government conservatism. This is where I take slight issue with his generalization. I think that these views are more cross-spectral strata than split by political ideology. To an extent, progressives are more susceptible to “daddy gubmint” mentality (the “anointed” view) than conservatives, but both sides are quite willing to rely on experts, “verbal virtuosity” (a phrase Sowell coined to describe the virtue signalling elites do to get their way), and logical fallacy.
He then spent some time describing the techniques intellectuals use to pull the wool over the eyes of their society. This section was a bit repetitive, because every single technique was an “argument without an argument” and “verbal virtuosity.” Nonetheless, Sowell’s detailed analysis cuts the legs out from under the most common and relied upon tactics of the misinformative intelligentsia. The most lasting concept from this section was the idea that these people aren’t intentionally lying, but are happy to stop at the most superficial analysis of their worldview when the so-called evidence confirms their biases. Rationalization sweeps away any non-conforming data. From there, the “vision of the anointed” adds a moral tinge that stops them from rethinking their worldview when the evidence mounts against it. Besides stylistic criticism of this section, I have no other criticisms. Sowell nails the pseudo-intellectualism that only tangentially relates to reality.
After setting down his framework, Sowell proceeded to step through multiple examples, each of a massive failure of the intelligentsia to grasp reality, resulting in widespread harm to society. Sowell’s magnum opus is his detailed and excoriative dressing down of the intellectuals that agitated for disarmament in the interwar period in the early 20th century. In authoritative fashion, Sowell steps through the accumulating evidence against pacifism, the continued headlong dive into pacifism by the intellectuals of Britain and France, and the graphic unraveling of their belief system in World War II. In going through their flawed worldview, Sowell didn’t shy away from showing the modern branches thought still relying on the flawed assumptions of the 20s and 30s.
While Intellectuals and Society wasn’t as good as Basic Economics as a whole, Sowell’s utter dismantling of the interwar progressive pacifists is the best I’ve ever read from him. The book is also short enough that you can finish it quickly. The repetition didn’t annoy me nearly as much as it did in Basic Economics. Overall it’s a good read, and Sowell’s take on interwar appeasement is worth the price of admission on its own. I give it four trash can lids out of five.
Second!
Sounds kind of like a continuation of A Conflict of Visions. Or more likely, an application of that work to the subject matter.
I loved the books of Sowell’s that I read – I even am amused by his somewhat less rigorous opinion columns, but those are not on the same level as the books.
In one of his books, perhaps this one, Sowell puts Oliver Wendell Holmes on the “tragic vision” team, which I think is a wee bit naive on Dr. Sowell’s part. Holmes fused his Civil War experiences with a lot of Nietzsche and became a hard-core legal positivist, the first more-or-less “out” atheist on the Supreme Court, and a fan of eugenics – which he not only said was constitutional, but a Good Thing.
A good writer with some influential proggy supporters (like Frankfurter), Holmes was able to win his way into the Pantheon of Greatness by use of the very verbal virtuosity which Sowell is supposedly on guard against.
2nd the anti-Holmes POV. “Progressive”? “Pragmatist”? GFY.
“Sowell outlined two different worldviews, the “tragic” worldview that views life as a series of minute tradeoffs versus the “anointed” worldview that views life as a top-down progression toward perfection.”
I think the top down view was inherited by the left from various sources starting with Marxism, the success of Lenin in grabbing the revolution by the horns and using propaganda, the Situationist International, and, also, Marshall McLuhan.
(Yes, yes, I know nothing of his work).
Put these influences in a bottle and shake them up, and you get the modern progresssive chattering class, for whom appearances are far more important than reality. Whether people say racist things in public, to them, is far more important than whether, for instance, the drug war is racist.
To the intellectual left, perception is more important than reality, and in political terms, for the furtherance of their goals, that may be right. Discrimination against LGBT didn’t become socially unacceptable because of any law–but they did achieve laws and such by making discrimination against LGBT seem socially unacceptable. They’re trying to the same thing with global warming. I wish we could make taxing income and corporate profits appear to be socially unacceptable.
I’d like to hit this guy on a gut level.
American progressivism had some pretty deep religious roots in the beginning – much more so than Marxist. Though you can see why it was easy to transition from one to the other. Progressivism also was influenced by the growth of management theory, in this case it being applied to governance instead of production. Finally you had misunderstood and misapplied Darwin.
I know progressives came out of evangelism, and I suspect it scratches the same itch for a lot of people that religion used to.
The intellectuals writing the scripts aren’t hailing back to that, however.
I think some of them read 1984 like part Machiavelli and part instruction manual. Orwell would be appalled.
No, they instead work themselves into an emotional frenzy and project their own totalitarian foibles onto others and then bleat endlessly about it.
1984 sales have gone through the roof since Trump was elected. It’s willfull blindess that they can’t see that the Light Bringer was just as big a fascist as Trump is.
The Lightbringer loved them and they loved him.
“…perception is more important than reality,…”
Don’t forget, they subscribe to critical theory. One of the fundamental premises of critical theory is that every bit of information that comes into your head is warped by personal bias, thus objective truth does cannot exist. Talk about poisoning the well…geez.
I wish we could make taxing income and corporate profits appear to be socially unacceptable.
I don’t remember who I heard/read say it, but they made that point during the last Presidential campaign. When every other phrase out of Bernie’s mouth was, “it is immoral.” (He was talking about not giving people enough freebies), the person pointed out that needed to be stolen and used often. It cannot be pointed out enough that theft is also immoral. Slavery is not only immoral, but illegal, and people who actually pay taxes are slaves until “tax freedom day”. The entire IRS is immoral. Most of the government is immoral as it regularly enacts theft and other immoral actions. I am not sure it would work because, the progressives are better at marketing, control the education system and a whole bunch of people don’t pay taxes.
“On a high level, he equates the “anointed” view with big-government liberalism and the “tragic” view with small-government conservatism. This is where I take slight issue with his generalization. I think that these views are more cross-spectral strata than split by political ideology.”
I would certainly agree that you can find authoritarians with a constrained vision (I think Joseph de Maistre would qualify) and you can find unconstrained people with libertarian views (like those libertarian visionaries who dream of awesome victories by scientific progress and/or voluntary anarchistic communities).
But there is, I think, *some* correlation between constrained and limited govt conservative, on the one hand, and unconstrained and proggy, on the other.
In debates over whether to have the government launch massive social experiments, it’s generally the constrained people balking at it and the unconstrained people who endorse it, and who if the experiments fail are ready with their “we didn’t do it hard enough” or “evil elites tricked the people” excuses.
People are naturally good.
Voters are people.
Therefore, voters are naturally good.
Good people are progressive.
Therefore, voters are naturally progressive.
Sometimes voters oppose progressive ideas.
THEREFORE, the voters were tricked by wealthy evildoers, thanks to Citizens United.
QED
I love explaining the details of CU to my progressive friends. Then ask them if they think their favorite media outlet can be silenced by the FEC for writing hit pieces against Bush/Trump.
You’re giving the progressive estimation of Other People far too much leeway.
“Voters who oppose progressive referenda are evil” is more appropriate and needed.
I think there are two groups of people we’re talking about.
The Obama administration and his media fawns really are lying, and they don’t care whether what they’re saying is true in the strict sense. “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” is straight out of Plato’s noble lie playbook. They’re lying, and they’re doing it on purpose–because they think what they’re doing is right. ObamaCare was a means to force the middle class to sacrifice their quality and low cost of care in order to expand Medicaid so that more poor people could get free medical care. If we fail to undo that Medicaid expansion, he will have succeeded in that permanently.
Then there’s the second group–the everyday people we meet on the internet (elsewhere), who really can’t think for themselves and don’t know what to do. I wish more people had more confidence to trust their own judgement and, certainly, to stand up for their own qualitative preferences. I’m not just talking about the relatively uneducated either. Did you know medical doctors make some of the very easiest marks to be ripped off by con men? Apparently, they tend to believe in their own authority, and it tends to poison their whole world view. If this guy was a cardiologist, I’d trust him to crack open my ribs and cut into my heart. Why shouldn’t I trust him to know what he’s doing with my money–he’s a financial adviser!
The first group is the preacher.
The second group is the choir.
“Media fawns” is one of the great Johnos of our time.
Ken, I know you want the Republican health care bill to pass and I have heard your reasoning. repealing the mandate. cutting off medicare expansion. I get it.
My huge problem with it is that is just more of the same. It’s mostly just a slightly trimmed ACA. I see nothing in it deals with the massive problems that stem from government interference in the health care market. Medicare under paying and distorting the market will not change, it just won’t get worse as fast as it would have. I don’t see any cutting of the red tape around pharmaceuticals getting approved quicker. I don’t see a loosening of prescription laws so I can get antibiotics from a nurse. The new bill leaves us basically where we were before-With government playing the prominent role in the health care market. I don’t see the new solving anything. Maybe preventing it from getting worse, but certainly not better.
I hope the Rs can’t get it passed. I hope the Rs realize that many of them owe their seats in Congress to a promise to repeal the ACA. not replace. repeal.
I read Ken’s reasoning about the “Trumpcare,” health care bill and it was incredibly persuasive. Saying that though, anything the GOP passed would be framed as them killing people so why not just do the right thing and actually address the issues and the reasons why health care is expensive.
That is it exactly. The bill in the Senate essentially does not change anything from what I hear or read. Minor rollbacks on Medicare and renaming of language. The Dems say they are going to kill everyone in the country if it is passed. Fuck it. Repeal it all. It all goes back to Pre ACA, done. They are going to be labeled as murderers regardless.
Then get into why health care is so expensive, most of which is government involvement. I have no hope though.
The bill in the senate doesn’t do anything?
It gets rid of the individual mandate, which is morally indefensible, it rolls back eligibility for Medicaid to what it was before ObamaCare, and it gets rid of the rule that prevents unskilled workers from getting more than 29 hours of work a week before their employers have to offer them health insurance.
Again, the reason the moderates in both the House and Senate are reluctant to support it is because it’s so libertarian.
16 of the 20 Republican House members who voted against the AHCA were either from moderate states (e.g. New Jersey) or swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. The moderates voted against it because rolling back Medicaid is so very radical–I don’t think anyone has ever done it before.
Don’t tell me it isn’t really doing anything.
While not in law, the individual mandate is already dead.
I could be wrong, but I think the medicaid roll back is an option for states. Not mandatory? I could be wrong. I often am.
All of that could be achieved with a full repeal. Including the idiotic hours worked/persons employed requirement. Did these so called moderates vote for repeal in the gazillion show votes while Obama was President? Shame the fuckers until they can’t go home. Shame them until they are afraid to walk out of their damn office. That is bullshit. How many times did these pricks vote on repeal?
The individual mandate isn’t in place now because Trump signed an EO telling the IRS not to enforce it.
When President Liz Warren takes office, reinstating that will be one of the first things she does–it just takes the stroke of her pen.
It needs to be repealed. Temporarily stayed by the grace of the emperor doesn’t make me think he’s magnanimous for not siccing the IRS on the working poor.
Want to make me think he’s magnanimous? Sign the bill that takes away his power to decide whether to persecute the working poor for not buying health insurance.
Rep. Massie called it Obamacare 1.1 – I think I might just trust him on that over you.
If Republicans had the luxury of spare votes in the Senate to get this thing done, I’d think what Senator Massie was doing was great.
We’d have so much support for doing fantastic, radically libertarian things that we’d have the luxury of shooting down a bill to roll back Medicaid eligibility–for the first time ever–because it wasn’t libertarian enough!!!
And wouldn’t that be great?
Of course, Massie isn’t a Senator and the AHCA has already cleared the House.
If Representative Massie’s opposition does anything now, it just influences the reconciliation bill when it goes to the joint committee. I hope he succeeds in making the AHCA even better, too.
The Senate is where the action is now, and despite what Cruz and Rand Paul say, they aren’t about to vote against the bill that kills ObamaCare–not if they want to run for president in the Republican primaries.
I think what Rand Paul and Cruz are doing is great–insofar as it makes the establishment and moderate candidates feel like the bill can’t be watered down if it’s going to pass. And what the moderates in the Senate want to do is keep the Medicaid expansion. The only moderate that I’m aware of that has come out publicly to oppose is that guy from Nevada. The more Cruz, Paul, Massie and company make waves now, the less confident the moderates will feel about saving the Medicaid expansion.
And that’s a good thing.
So long as they show up to vote and vote to kill the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion.
Ken, the point is that he doesn’t think this repeals/replaces PPACA, that it is in fact, a point level release over the original. You can rant all you want about how great the Repubs and Trump are on this – it just isn’t going to convince anyone.
Maybe you should look at the facts rather whether it’s me or Massie speaking them.
Just humor me for a second . . . Massie could be wrong–isn’t that right?
Ayn Rand could be wrong about something.
The Prophet Mohamed could be wrong about something.
Jesus of Nazareth could be wrong about something.
Ken Shultz could be wrong about something.
If Massie is criticizing the bill because it doesn’t do enough, okay–I wish it did more, too.
If Massie thinks there’s going to be a more libertarian bill that passes the House–when the AHCA squeaked by with four votes and 20 moderate Republicans voting against it for being too libertarian and cutting the entitlement requirements for Medicaid?
He’s wrong.
Does the bill repeal the individual mandate?
The correct answer is “yes”.
Does the bill roll back Medicaid eligibility?
The correct answer is “yes”.
Massie wants it to do more? Good for him! I want it to do more, too.
It isn’t going to. Not this bill. If it gets past the Senate, it may be only by one or two votes.
I’m not wrong about that. That’s a fact.
If Massie thinks Congress would get behind a bill to repeal ObamaCare if only Congress rejected this bill and wrote another one that’s even more radically libertarian, not only is he wrong–he’s delusional.
so why not just do the right thing and actually address the issues and the reasons why health care is expensive?
Because they don’t really want to. It’s the only answer that makes sense. You’re right about what ever passes the left will demonize the Rs for. Those Rs up there in Congress have to know that the sky high price of health care is entirely the fault of failed intervention after failed intervention. The Rs are supposed to represent small government and non economic intervention. In my 30 years here on Earth, I haven’t seen any meaningful roll backs of economic intervention from them.
“Medicare under paying and distorting the market will not change, it just won’t get worse as fast as it would have.”
You won’t hear this anywhere else, but the fact is that moving people from Medicaid to private insurance through subsidies is exactly like moving students from public schools to private schools with vouchers.
The AHCA isn’t the solution to all our problems–it’s a way to get started, and it’s showing us a road to eventually getting rid of Medicaid completely. The more people we move from Medicaid to private insurance, the better the market will be.
If Congress won’t vote to completely abandon Medicaid patients to die in the street–this year or any other year–then we have to start somewhere, and rolling back the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion is an excellent way to start. If there were a better bill that could get through the current congress, I’d support that instead.
The AHCA isn’t the solution to all our problems–it’s a way to get started, and it’s showing us a road to eventually getting rid of Medicaid completely.
I sincerely hope you are right Ken. I really do. The AHCA isn’t libertarian though, it’s statist. I see it as just another bad bill in a long line of bad bills. Better than O-care, sure. I think it will fail, just as all government economic intervention always fail. In a few years when the Ds have power again they will be able to blame shitty health care on the Rs and then we will end up with an even more horrible healthcare bill.
It’s not a libertarian Congress, and we’re not about to get an entirely libertarian bill by accident.
That being said, getting rid of the individual mandate is libertarian. Siccing the IRS on people for not buying health insurance is morally bankrupt from a libertarian perspective.
Moving people from Medicaid to private insurance through subsidies is as libertarian as Milton Friedman’s school vouchers. It isn’t an anarcho-capitalist solution–it’s a transition opportunity away from Medicaid that won’t exist without the AHCA.
There are things about it that aren’t libertarian, but if it were any more libertarian, it wouldn’t have made it through the House much less the Senate.
And it’s not as if we default to some libertarian plan if the AHCA fails. If the AHCA fails, we’ll keep Medicaid expanded, refund the backstops for the insurance companies, and wait for someone to finally push single payer or nationalized care over the finish line.
Whatever else the solution is, it also must necessarily include getting rid of the individual mandate and rolling Medicaid eligibility to what it as before ObamaCare, as well. Let’s not let an opportunity to take the first necessary steps go by. Its not a home run. It gets us to first or second base, tops. But you gotta get on base before you can score a run.
Except for those of us who are not provided either employer or government insurance – individual mandate dictates that we MUST purchase insurance at an absurd rate (my family of four now well over $12K per year with $10K+ deductible – I don’t have actual numbers b/c I opted out for the penalty this year). Cadillac tax – gone (thanks, Heller), but individual mandate remains – sorry, but “more of the same” is lost on me.
The Repub bill also allows States to opt-out of specific ACA insurance requirements, which ostensibly will provide lower-cost plans. Unfortunately, it seems that even Libertarians are blithely unaware of the impact to those of us who actually pay for our own healthcare
I agree that repeal is the best-case – but this is a 100% non-starter.
“Individual mandate remains – sorry, but “more of the same” is lost on me”
Help me understand what you’re talking about when you say, “The individual mandate remains”.
ACA current form – not the proposed legislation. I am aligned with your thinking on this.
They’re (Obama and co.) lying, and they’re doing it on purpose–because they think what they’re doing is right.”
I disagree. Overuse of antibiotics has caused many pathogens to develop resistance or outright immunity to those antibiotics. Many strains of STDs are at the top of this list primarily because hookers in foreign lands take antibiotics prophylactically. This problem is compounded by the paucity of new, more effective antibiotics. STDs that people used to joke about are becoming life threatening and spreading at an alarming rate.
Obama removed some of those diseases from the list of diseases that disqualify one’s entry into the United States. Why would he do that? The answer is simple: he let horrible diseases into the country because he wants the deplorables here to be exposed to horrible diseases.
No doubt he believes he is justified, but he doesnt think he is right, i.e. doing good. He was taking revenge. The truth is that they hate white, conservative America and Hillary got caught saying so explicitly.
You assume far too much about Obama’s intellectual capacity:
“I think that listing these STDs as a way to disqualify someone’s entry into the United States disproportionally affects the poor and unprivileged who don’t have access to medical treatment, therefore, I’ll have the restrictions lifted in order to assist them with no real negative consequences whatsoever.”
There, justified because I think I’m a good person, and also an idiot. This “he secretly wants to infect white America with herpes” is some Alex Jones level shit.
Well, he did infect white america with herpes. I’ll just stick with that instead of trying to read his mind. What’s in his head is irrelevant.
Foreseeable consequences are not unintended.
+1
And these consequences were not only foreseeable, they were also foreseen.
What’s in his head is irrelevant…
No doubt he believes he is justified, but he doesnt think he is right, i.e. doing good. He was taking revenge.
You specifically assumed motivation and constructed a narrative. You cared what was in his head so you could cast him as a Machiavellian villain going after white America. I’m just pointing out the obvious bias in your assumed motivations. He’s still perfectly capable of believing that he’s doing good when he’s doing stupid things.
Barack Obama is incompetent, not a supervillain.
You are right, and I am drunk so I am not prepared to get too far into it.
I will just say this: Most of the time things really are just what they look like. He let horrible diseases into the country because he wants horrible diseases in the country. I am not buying that he wants poor people to have access to medical care when he can simply send medical care there without exposing the population here. I am also not buying that he didn’t know the consequences of letting those diseases in.
He said fuck you because he means…fuck you. It’s not complicated.
I am pretty sure herpes was around in the 80’s. “shits like luggage. You have it forever” /Eddie Murphy
I am not sure if it is warranted due to treatment these days, but a person HIV positive is not immigrating to, or working in too many countries. I had to have a test for every work visa I have ever applied for. I am pretty sure that is no longer a requirement in the US. Is it in Canada?
I was referring to the antiviral-resistant herpes that’s been emerging over the past couple years.
I don’t know about work visas, I know for permanent residency they require testing but don’t have a specific HIV policy. What they do have, however, is the standard justification of “costs too much for public health, stay out” clause.
Ya, we don’t have that clause. Even though we have free to user nationalized healthcare for some people, we like to ignore that down here because pointing that out makes you worse than Hitler.
I was on a job overseas where some Bolivian dudes we worked with turned up positive for TB. Those guys had their visas cancelled, quarantined, isolated, and flown out of the country once they were not infectious so fast it would make your head spin. Racist country that was. Not wanting to get their population exposed to TB by some Bolivian dudes.
And many strains of cattle-associated diseases are at the top of this list because even our poorest people eat meat for 3 meals a day.
Oh also there’s a mysterious “obesity” “epidemic” that we just can’t imagine has any association whatsoever with eating 10x as much meat per capita as the average Senegalese… must be soda and soda alone, right????
Soda and cigarettes are just convenient scape goats to punish evil profiteers. “Big Beef” will get its turn.
I’m not sure what is up with this, but why do I keep hearing that Gorsuch doesn’t take part in SCOTUS decisions? I’ve seen this several times now since he was nominated. Is there some rule that prevents him from doing so? This one seems pretty important.
Property rights loss in SCOTUS case</a?
Is there a new term for botching a link and still having it to work? Hyperion’s magical link? Surely, I am the greatest.
Is your Supreme Court merely working through their back-catalogue of cases before they get to ones where Gorsuch also heard the oral arguments?
I was under the impression that, if a Justice hadn’t been involved in the oral, he/she wouldn’t be involved in the final decision.
if a Justice hadn’t been involved in the oral, he/she wouldn’t be involved in the final decision
I don’t like where these euphemisms are going.
They are cases they heard before he joined.
Ok, I see, guys, thanks. I didn’t t think about that.
Off Topic, there’s an interesting story at the WSJ–sort of on topic, maybe . . .
“The Last Battle for Democracy in Venezuela”
Jeane Kirkpatrick broke with the neocons in making her distinctions between authoritarians and totalitarians. Those who won’t get caught dead shaking hands with vicious dictators can really make a mess of things. Those who will on the other hand . . .
Exhibit One is Pinochet. Imagine if the United States had indicted Pinochet on drug trafficking charges, and he knew that if he ever stepped down from power, his enemies would extradite him to the United States and he’d spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison. Realize, instead, what really happened–Pinochet held a national referendum on his own rule, and, when he lost, he stepped down.
Obama was too precious to shake hands with dictators. instead he piled drug trafficking charges on the Venezuelan government–not just in Maduro’s cabinet either. There are supreme court judges in Venezuela who are facing drug trafficking charges in the U.S. For all of these people, when questions come before them as to whether to help Maduro dissolve the current Venezuelan constitution and replace it all with local workers councils elected by state controlled unions, in addition to whatever else they think about, they also have to consider that if and when Maduro loses power, they’ll probably spend the rest of their lives in a U.S. federal prison.
Ideological rigidity and blatant stupidity aren’t always the same thing, but they aren’t always mutually exclusive either.
He preferred to bow to them.
Love Sowell. Would always read his articles at humanevents.com before it became Ann Coulters exclusive domain
I read Sowell’s, “The Vision of the Anointed,” and absolutely loved it. I wished he went around colleges to speak but from what I understand he was somewhat of a private person. On the other hand, I had to go to a Michael Eric Dyson event this past fall. How anyone can label that man an academic is beyond me.
He retired a couple month ago. The Trump election seems to have ‘broke’ him (less ‘broke’ and more he realized that the rest of his life was a lot more enjoyable than talking about politics).
The Trump election broke me too. It was very disheartening to see a lot of people who while I disagreed with them on politics but still viewed as level headed rational individuals becoming these unhinged vicious asshole simply because a guy who they didn’t like got elected.
You kidding me, that’s the best part! Everyone ripping their masks off to show every insecurity and emotional imbalance of their personalities has totally validated my worldview that we’re all barely evolved apes driven by random chemical surges in our tiny brains.
…hey, us cynics need to have good days too.
Don’t get me wrong, it was fun watching the Left lose their shit. I didn’t go to bed till 2:30 AM on Election Night because I really enjoyed seeing the assholes on MSNBC and CNN lose their shit. It was like someone telling a 5 year old that Santa Clause does not exist.
I am so, so sorry. You have my sympathies.
But look on the bright side, it could have been Coates.
Fuck that shit. I would taken a zero that day. Like Dyson is comically stupid so at the very least I walked out there feeling intellectually superior but Coates represents something far more sinister.
*would have
To be fair, what Robin Givens did to Mike Dyson is terrible.
You know who else wrote a book?
Chelsea?
Job?
Me?
Bill Ayers?
Also, Tony Schwartz.
Utopia
“…debate over whether Venezuela is sliding toward dictatorship.”
I see.
From the comments:
And then a good point on a lightly commented on article:
Which one of you is the last person?
The first comment says everything about the left. So it’s some sort of coup when a person dies from cancer and their hand picked successor continues down the chosen path and runs out of other people’s money? Leftists, look, you’ve been banging your head on that wall for more than a century. You ideas do not work. Give.it.the.fuck.up and admit you’re wrong.
“Leftists, look, you’ve been banging your head on that wall for more than a century. You ideas do not work. Give.it.the.fuck.up and admit you’re wrong.”
How I wish it was that simple. I like the way Eric Hoffer explains it. The gist is the ability of an ideology or religion to spread and survive has nothing to do with logic or evidence. All that matters is how well it recruits and keeps followers and how well it inspires people to band together and work towards a common goal. That’s it.
The fact that Islam leads to poverty and intellectual stagnation everywhere is irrelevant to the staying power of Islam, because it offers a system that *sounds* good: people living in obedience to the perfect, unchanging laws of god.
The fact that socialism leads to poverty, oppression, and death everywhere is irrelevant to the staying power of socialism, because socialism *sounds* good:
tolerance
equality
peace
inclusion
diversity
t
e
p
i
d
Unfortunately, it often takes a very long time for dumb ideas to go away. It took about 2,000 years before Galileo proved that Aristotle was wrong when he said heavier objects fall faster. Hell, I knew people in elementary school who were wrong about that. I had to prove it to them with a rock and a crumpled up piece of paper. And even then some of them wouldn’t believe it.
Flat Earth Society.
When you’re hitting it from behind, and he/she/xe turns around and moans “taxation is theft”.
“Oh yeah, quote Friedman at me, you dirty bitch.”
There may be a small market for libertarian pornography. Probably about the size as those guys who fuck cars.
Yes, we are aware that glibertarians.com is a niche site.
Thicc is not a glibertarian special, it’s a universal value.
I think he was referring to SFs writing. To some, I’m sure, it’s pornagraphic.
Much of it is pornographic, but not in any way fap worthy. Retch worthy no doubt, but no fapping going on there.
Rule 34. Also, there’s a curious amount of porn featuring retching.
I thought lots of women had rape fantasies like Ayn Rand did.
There may be a small market for libertarian pornography.
You mean other than SugarFree?
Sugarfree’s work is more ‘deranged and diseased psyche’ than ‘libertarian’. I mean, unless you’re into Lovecraftian Hilary clitoris. No judgement.
You are re-linking now? Is that your youtube posting handle HM? The Smegmeister?
No, this is my youtube channel.
Highly disappointed. That lacked any sort of Asian up skirt action whatsoever.
Got to go to his pornhub channel for that.
Ok, there’s weirdness and then there is…that. I dont even know what to call that. I dont have any words.
You only get words to describe it once you have watched enough and can do it in Klingon.
Nintendo’s newest flagship game is a critique of rape culture:
I thought all the Mario games where he rescues the princess are criticisms of Bowser’s rape culture.
LSU just knocked Oregon st. out of the CWS. They looked unbeatable for a long time.
The best part about Sowell is the hatred he brings out in progs. Man, do they hate him. And it’s easy to see why. He exposes their bullshit.
I love Sowell quotes:
***
The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
Most problems do not get solved. They get superseded by other concerns.
One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it.
Letters from teachers continue to confirm the incompetence which they deny. A teacher in Montana says that my criticisms of teachers are “nieve.” No, that wasn’t a typographical error. He spelled it that way twice.
If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.
Envy plus rhetoric equals ‘social justice’.
People who talk incessantly about “change” are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.
Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, “What is the point of being a superpower if you can’t do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities?” The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone.
Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.
In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse’s room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.
***
That kind of thing is what drives me nuts. Just like a VA mental health clinic (or any other VA clinic) is only open 9-5 on weekdays. Not open on weekends when people might actually need it (hell, the DMV in VA is open on Saturdays).
The new regulation allowing Sec VA to fire senior folks more easily and improve accountability is a step in the right direction and hopefully Shulkin will keep working on it. Seems a lot more serious about it than anyone else recently.
For my money, best Sowell books are Ethnic America and Race and Culture. Ethnic America is short and packed with info and examples that he doesn’t use elsewhere, thus avoiding that repetition problem that plagues his other books. Race and Culture is lengthier, but covers the same ground as Intellectuals + Vision of the Anointed in less time while also making a case for culture differences over against discrimination or genetics as a cause for ethnic success/failure. (This second part is surprisingly apropos in the age of the alt-right and could even be expanded on.)
Back on topic, Intellectuals exposes the “what” — the worldview powering what we could call “the anointed”. Seeing Like A State explains the “why” — what it is about the mechanics of the state, industrialization, and rural regions which seems to make the emergence of an “anointed” and their characteristics so universal, and why their opposition is often conservative and almost illegible in their concrete concerns.
I saw Triggly Puff today, no shit. I went to get beer and then remembered I needed to go to the grocery and get a couple of things that wifey wanted. So I’m looking for the aisle where the coconut milk (leite de coco) is at. I made a right and headed down the aisle, then I looked up and coming full steam up the aisle is Triggly Puff. Pushing a cart 1/6th her girth. The cart looked like one of those shopping carts people buy for 3 year olds, in her grasp. She looked angry as usual. Using my best sense of spatial relations, I concluded that there was not even one full inch on either side of her to get around. My only course of action was full retreat back down the aisle. I would have been crushed into a pancake like Wiley Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon. I’ve been traumatized. Only more beer can help, I’m working on it.
You cracked me up you fat-shaming bastard. I really did spit out a little of my drink.
That’s what you get for suppressing her free speech, yuh shitlord. How dare you oppress her feelz.
(Seriously, that’s what she claimed. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIpkdusnIkE"vid with the cute girl giving her a sidelook WTF? is priceless.)
Someone’s already probably posted this, but fuck you if you did. Jerk.
“Early in the book, Sowell outlined two different worldviews, the “tragic” worldview that views life as a series of minute tradeoffs versus the “anointed” worldview that views life as a top-down progression toward perfection.”
Huh. Yuh dern’t say.
Bad monster! Back to your can!
random thought
Why is it that people who favor mass punishment generally oppose mass reward? I can see being against both or for both, but to have one at not the other makes no sense.
I guess even collectivists can recognize the value of individual incentives, just not consistently.
Cultural Appropriation! This band from Mozambique is playing metal!
The horror!
Fun cultural appropriation game:
Get progs to praise Baba Yetu.
Tell them it’s the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili written by a white man.
Yeah, it seems tedious to me, but Civ IV… Fuck, I didn’t think the game was much of an improvement from III – if at all, but still… Civ IV is an issue?
Tell the worthless progs to go fuck with CoD players. Or even better – just go fuck off in general. Just my opinion.
Here’s this guy from a while back covering Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control”. He’s from South Africa, I believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKfwSFI8LhQ
It’s really interesting. He turns it into a commentary about African Pentecostalism as a form of cultural imperialism–turning black people white . . .
Yes, it’s cultural appropriation of English pop culture used to criticize cultural imperialism.
If it turned back on itself any more than that, it might rip a hole in the space-time continuum.
That guy’s documentary about South African electronic music was quite interesting.
mental meandering
The Aztecs lived on poor land. They could only grow a few basic crops and there were no other resources they could trade. The only way they had for getting anything was by plundering another tribe. I think this explains the nature of their religion, in which the gods required constant human sacrifice in order to keep the world from collapsing into chaos. Normally, people feel guilty about murder and theft, but it becomes easy if you tell yourself that by killing and stealing, you are saving the world.
It’s a similar story with the Vikings. They had to plunder to live, and they needed a story to get people fired up for it. Hence the beliefs that only warriors who die in battle can go to heaven.
Islam is a little different. Arabia at that time was full of chaos and barbarism, so Islam was actually an improvement. It’s a self-hobbling movement though because it stifles creativity and innovation. It’s a decent way to run a tribal/clan-based society, but not much more. The basic problem in the Muslim world is how to adapt to new ideas and technologies that often conflict with their traditions. A good concrete example of this is the printing press. It was slow to catch on in the Arab world because Arabic is a cursive script and letters change shape depending on whether they are at the front, middle, or end of a word. This makes printing Arabic much harder. You basically need a block for each word like Chinese.
https://blog.29lt.com/2009/01/05/the-first-arabic-press/
Socialism has more in common with the Aztecs. It basically boils down to envy. Some people can’t earn as much as others Since stealing is frowned upon, the socialists have to do all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify their take what doesn’t belong to them. So they tell themselves that the capitalists are rich because they stole from them and therefore they are heroes for recovering the people’s wealth.
Tribal societies definitely have less in the way of social stratification. Even the chief of the tribe isn’t much above average people and is often only in power so long as he keeps most people happy.
I’ve read it well argued (See Orlando Patterson: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture) that almost all tribes probably went through some form of cannibalism or human sacrifice for those reasons–to settle the awkwardness in the tribe with social stratification and slavery.
https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Making-Western-Culture/dp/0465025358/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=DNVYWXF71QQTPWFH54DG
If I own a slave and you don’t, then I’ve got more than you*.
If I own a slave and you don’t, you’re not much different from a slave–because slaves don’t own slaves either.
Human sacrifice both lets warriors enjoy the benefit of the slaves they capture for a time, and it alleviates the friction of their status by getting rid of the slave eventually.
Cannibalism lets the whole tribe in on the degradation of the slave. Now we’re all above the slave–since we devoured him.
*Patterson argues, quite persuasively, that freedom was first conceptualized as the opposite of slavery. We probably shouldn’t wonder why a slave holder like Jefferson could pontificate about the virtues of freedom even as a slaveholder. We might wonder how the idea of freedom might have occurred to a society that never knew slavery.
*If I own a slave, then I must be free.
“The Aztecs lived on poor land. They could only grow a few basic crops and there were no other resources they could trade. The only way they had for getting anything was by plundering another tribe.”
True for everyone, everywhere. There were very few ‘rich’ places on earth where survival wasn’t a daily struggle. The first exception that comes to mind are the Arawak indians that lived in the Caribbean. By all accounts their life was fairly easy and strife-free. Abundant food, pleasant climate…
Of course the northernmost were unaware of the cannibal apocalypse that was creeping up on them but the spanish put a stop to that.
My random thought that I am tossing into your mix is that people who didn’t have to struggle are extinct.
Why didn’t the Arawak population grow to the point where food wasn’t abundant?
file under: Oh. Canada…
Lady Freaks Out Over Dukes of Hazzard ‘Confederate Flag’ Car at Toronto Festival
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/watch-lady-freaks-out-over-dukes-of-hazzard-car-at-toronto-area-festival/
***
“This racist car with not one, but two Confederate flags on it is front and center, the first thing that people see when they walk into this festival,” Anderson said in the video.
“Remove the car or there will be hell to pay,” she said.
The organizers of the Highland Creek Heritage Festival apologized for the presence of the car on the event’s Facebook page.
***
I advise putting on a helmet before watching the video, as you may come down with a sudden case of head desk.
The SJWs might get ’em, but the law never will.
Why do you insist on raising everyone’s blood pressure?
Oh wait, that’s one of the reasons we come here.
The price of being informed, is anger.
I know when it’s a Heat Street link that I shouldn’t click unless I want to be annoyed.
I wonder if there’s some flag that’s a symbol of the French-and-Indian war or something which we would actually be a relevant hate symbol?