What’s Wrong with the World

You did not mention whether you had donned the button, but no, I do not ask.

I admit however that I would have donned the button, and indeed would have put the sign in my window, if I believed that it would preserve a tranquil life.

For one brief moment, looking at those colorful, shiny buttons, I thought to myself, maybe Moldbug has a point...

Finely written.

If America is _becoming_ more like a Communist country (which, undeniably, it is), this is a _betrayal_ of its origins and what it was from the outset. So, no, someone who says it is a Communist country because of some reactionary theory that it was poisoned from the start is plain wrong. The person who has a point, instead, is Balint Vazsonyi, author of America's Thirty Years' War. Vazsonyi, who escaped a Communist country, understood well that Communism is fundamentally at odds with America's essence but that, nonetheless, America is being corrupted by ideologues in power who are turning the country in a Communist direction. I can't quickly find in what year the book was originally published, but it was quite some time ago, and Vazsonyi's prescience has only been shown again and again since then.

Lydia,

You and I are in agreement -- what is scary is that this change and drift (and I agree with you it is a betrayal of our original principals and of those who fought valiantly against all forms of tyranny from our founding through the end of the Cold War) is indeed occurring right now and with greater frequency.

On the opposite end of the phenomenon of the 'sign in the greengrocer's shop', is the angry leftist mob and their ideological enablers. Read this story and weep:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/27/fascist-american-universities-2016-notes-from-cal-state-los-angeles/

Yep, those are part and parcel of the same phenomenon.

For one brief moment, looking at those colorful, shiny buttons, I thought to myself, maybe Moldbug has a point...

A painful pill for me to swallow was acknowledging that Zippy had a point in noting that the Sons of Liberty (known for, among other things, hurting people for insufficient American patriotism) were just the first obvious form of SJWs in our history. Now their general views were far less insane than modern SJWs, but they were 200 some years earlier in the progression. All modern ideologies have a serious problem with being vicious toward those who disagree with them.

Mike T,

The problem I have with the idea that it is uniquely "modern ideologies" that "have a serious problem with being vicious toward those who disagree with them" is that history suggests otherwise -- what was the Catholic Church's position to public heretics in the Middle Ages? Kings to those who questioned their rightful authority to rule over the people? If anything, the Americans can be characterized for how much restraint they showed to their enemies compared to their European counterparts.

I don't think it's uniquely modern, and the problem is not even evenly distributed among modern ideologies. However, it is undeniable that certain modern ideologies like various flavors of left-liberalism have a penchant for slaughtering even those who might not agree with them and have any capacity to be inconvenient.

The fact is that the Catholic Church's treatment of heretics is not even remotely as bad as any Communist regime's treatment of dissenters. Communists primarily give you a chance to repent so they have an excuse to not kill your family.

I'll also add that the "worst" attack on heretics, the Spanish Inquisition, was also primarily a tool for rooting out the losers of the reconquista and ensuring they could not hide from the state. It also managed to purge a whole 3,000 some people over the course of a few centuries. It didn't even have the Pope's support.

Yes, both sides of the Reformation did a lot of evil things to dissenters, but aside from the 30 years war, there was nothing remotely analogous to what hard-left regimes did to dissenters in the 20th century or even during the French Revolution.

If anything, the Americans can be characterized for how much restraint they showed to their enemies compared to their European counterparts.

In general, we have come a long way. However, had Lincoln been killed during the Civil War and replaced by a typical Republican (not Johnson), it is likely that the US would have been completely destroyed culturally and be unrecognizable today. It's often not taught these days that Lincoln was hated by most of his own party because of his refusal to consider any plan that left the South as conquered territory. Most Republicans wanted a vision in which for generations, the South would have suffered literal military imperialism. Had they gotten their way, American culture would have been irreparably broken.

Mike T,

I think we are actually on the same page -- I was just reacting to you lumping the early Americans in with the commies :-)

I do think you are right about the modern Left (beginning with the French revolution) and I would just push back against those (like Zippy) who would lump ALL modern political movements in with the modern Left.

Am I the only one who sees the irony of Leftists driving the purge in the backdrop of the Red Scares?

Sociological question: Were all the employees in the office of the DFSS wearing the buttons?

I would just push back against those (like Zippy) who would lump ALL modern political movements in with the modern Left.

I agree with him that all modern movements derive from the same source of errors. That's probably about the extent of it. I am generally sympathetic to right-liberalism. I am also not convinced that it is even possible to know what part of our problems are intrinsic to liberalism versus caused by ordinary societal decay. By any rational measure, the US has achieved a point of high civilization where decadence ordinarily settles in.

For example, I don't think we can actually know to what extent sexual libertine behavior is intrinsic to liberal values rather than caused by the state of a civilization. My hunch is that liberalism doesn't help, but it's also true that 90% of the sexual revolution was made possible by The Pill. Only a certain level of wealth and advancement allowed us to even get to that point, and the fact is that The Pill is probably the most dangerous and hard to evade temptation any society has ever faced.

Lydia,

Interestingly, not all employees were wearing the buttons. However, I also noticed large stacks of them as if there might have been a campaign for Head Start getting ready to launch and perhaps all employees had not yet been 'encouraged' to wear the button.

Thankfully, as someone who was just there to train folks on a computer program, I wouldn't be expected to have to wear the button (I work for a different department.)

Another data point: condoms have been around for a long, long time and never fundamentally changed human sexual behavior. So it stands to reason that technology has probably influenced our morality more than our political values at this point. There is also the increasing chance that genetics and culture actually deeply influence one another on a level that is scary to both liberals and non-liberals alike. Some peoples might also be not just culturally, but genetically, predisposed to being simultaneously more fiercely independent by nature and also capable of long time preferences that allow them to avoid constant civil strife while others are completely different.

BTW, slumlord (Social Pathology blog in case you haven't seen it before) has some interesting recent posts on neurology, human reason and how some of the ancient Western assumptions about man don't entirely old up anymore.

For one brief moment, looking at those colorful, shiny buttons, I thought to myself, maybe Moldbug has a point...

Well, you promised heresies...

In seriousness, though, good post. It echoes a favorite theme of mine, which I received from Theodore Dalrymple, that the purpose of Communist propaganda behind the Iron Curtain was not to convince, but to humiliate, by constraining the listener to at least appear to assent to obvious lies. This in time makes it nearly impossible to object to anything, because one's integrity has become so compromised, either by passive assent or by active participation in the dishonesty.

Nowadays, this manifests itself at the popular level as "political correctness," where people are no longer able to object to such things as teenage girls being forced to shower with males, or the idea of forcibly conscripting young women into combat units, because their moral vocabulary has been demolished by their passivity or their complicity in so many previous outrages.

Maybe the example you cite here is different in kind. But I don't think so, though it involves something more trivial (to the extent a $150 billion boondoggle can be called trivial).

It echoes a favorite theme of mine, which I received from Theodore Dalrymple, that the purpose of Communist propaganda behind the Iron Curtain was not to convince, but to humiliate, by constraining the listener to at least appear to assent to obvious lies.

I have often thought of this recently in relation to the transgender agenda. Guidelines are going out to everyone who teaches in a publicly funded school that "you must call all students by their preferred pronoun." And it's very clear that in public schools not only teachers but students will *get in trouble* if they refuse to refer to a boy who "identifies" as a girl by the pronoun "she" and play along in every way with the pretense that he is a girl.

Could anything be clearer? The intent is to force linguistic chaos and the denial of truth directly onto the "subjects" as a bald assertion of power. And if you object, often enough you are called "scientifically ignorant," than which nothing more Orwellian can be conceived.

WRT political correctness, the terror that it holds for conservatives is, I think, a natural outcome of Buckley's purge of the "extremists." He specifically wanted to get rid of the sort of people who don't care what the left things, hates the left and are more likely to rejoice in the suffering of the left than want to make friends with them. Now, as a good Catholic it is certainly understandable why he might not want to make friends with such people, but political allies is entirely another matter. These are precisely the sort of people who are now rising up under the "Alt-Right," "NeoReaction" and other labels to take the war to the left.

If the left is too busy getting the vapors and feeling triggered by the Alt-Right/NeoReaction to do more than respond, that is pressure off you, isn't it? That's precisely one of the reasons I have called the purging of "uncouth elements" a blunder. It is better to have the capacity to smile evilly and say "ready the shock troops" than have the other side think that Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous asset we have on offer.

those (like Zippy) who would lump ALL modern political movements in with the modern Left

A quote from Rothbard:

Ludwig von Mises was always a consistent admirer of the French Revolution which he perceived as a movement inspired by the American Revolution and its libertarian ideals. He regarded himself as a man of 1789, an heir to the Enlightenment.

From Mises, Nation State and Economy, pg 239

For us and for humanity, there is only one salvation, the return to the rationalistic liberalism of the ideas of 1789

Mike T:

a natural outcome of Buckley's purge of the "extremists

The Right has been purging itself and society in general for so long, and often effectively so. Why should the Left not follow suit?

Oh, baloney, Mike T. (And GJ.) Political correctness such as people are feeling in Jeff's office and in corporations and universities all over the country and the West has precisely zero to do with William F. Buckley, for crying out loud! It can hardly be a "result" of anything he did. Good grief. The left has _always_ been the side pressing for this. Heck, I remember quite clearly when the "speech codes" first came out on college campuses. It came from the left and was being done by them. The idea that the left has been "following suit" on a movement that originated with the right is historically laughable.

As far as distancing oneself from actual trash on the right, guess what? We do it, and will continue to do it, and are proud of doing it, because it's trash and because we have dignity and objective standards of our own. Not to ingratiate ourselves with the left. And, yeah, that _specifically_ includes "rejoicing in the suffering of the left." (It's always convenient when for a moment you give an honest characterization like that before going back into "I've been misunderstood" mode.) I realize that you are unwilling or incapable of understanding that, but as I keep telling you, that gets a shrug around here.

On the contrary, Lydia. It is risible to think that the Leftists learned nothing from having being purged, losing their jobs, having public opinion turned against them, their thoughts policed. It is utterly precious to think that when the Left came into power and started purging others, getting them fired, manipulating public opinion, and policing thoughts that the previous history did not in any way influence their actions. It is completely laughable too to think that they could not possibly have observed how the Right purged itself, and not learnt from them.

On the contrary, it is both historically plausible and likely that the Leftists learnt from what the Right did when they in power, and that these lessons influenced their subsequent actions.

GJ,

I'm not sure what you are implying here:

"It is risible to think that the Leftists learned nothing from having being purged, losing their jobs, having public opinion turned against them, their thoughts policed."

Do you mean anti-communist activity? You do realize that communists were trying to violently overthrow the legitimate government of the United States of America? No government around the world would let such behavior go unpunished.

If you are referring to what Lydia is talking about, then that is a relatively recent phenomenon (e.g. Buckley purged the Birchers in 1962) and was designed to help the conservative movement electorally (not to mention Buckley, as well as Russell Kirk, actually thought the Birchers were crazy.)

Jeffrey S.:

Yes, it's quite clear both points went over your head:

No government around the world would let such behavior go unpunished.

If you are referring to what Lydia is talking about, then that is a relatively recent phenomenon (e.g. Buckley purged the Birchers in 1962) and was designed to help the conservative movement electorally

But just maybe the whole idea of 'the smart actually can and do learn from what their enemies do and seek to improve on it' is not as common as I'd think it.

There is also the matter that the Buckleyites did not stop at the Birchers, but went on to purge Buchanan, Sobran, Coulter and recently attempted to do the same to Mark Steyn. I guess they're "trash" too. Either that or we're just deliberately excluding the purge of sane, but aggressive, conservatives because it means that Buckley started a movement that seemed sane at the time but in hindsight was obviously going to lead to the conservative movement eating its own until David Brooks is the only one left to turn out the lights.

Wait a minute, GJ. Don't start your counting at an arbitrary point a few years ago, like 1962. The Revolutionaries here purged the Tories. And the Whigs and Democrats purged the Federalists. And the Republicans purged the pro-slavery groups. And the pro-business forces purged the pro-prole unionists.

But wait: The Ghibellines purged the Guelphs time and time again ... and were purged in their turn. The Borgias purged the Medicis. The Anglicans purged the Puritans who purged the Quakers. (Who purged nobody, poor suckers).

But wait: Cain purged Abel, having gotten the best of him for the LAST TIME. And he didn't pussy-foot about it, either.

What's laughable is that you can locate the original source of purging tactics in the modern recent Right as if they invented the notion. How ridiculous.

Blah, blah, Mike T. The fact is that there is *not anything wrong* with refusing to allow stuff that you think is objectively crazy in the pages (literal or electronic) of your own publication. You have to go with what you actually think, and if you say, "Oh, I can't purge this insane person because that might *start a movement* that thirty or forty years from now, after I'm dead, would do something I would disagree with" you will just allow any crazy person to write for your magazine, so long as his crazy is considered by the world at large to be "right-wing," whatever that means, if you didn't happen to detect his crazy until after he's already hired. Which would be both dumb and wrong. No journal, blog, or other publication is content-neutral, and *of course* that could well mean, perfectly legitimately, *rejecting* a "no enemies to the right" editorial policy.

It's funny that you should spend more and more of your time here expatiating on the evils of "liberalism" and then suddenly come out with something like these comments, which are apparently against any sort of self-policing whatsoever for elements the editors of some publication deem insane.

WRT political correctness, the terror that it holds for conservatives is, I think, a natural outcome of Buckley's purge of the "extremists." ... There is also the matter that the Buckleyites did not stop at the Birchers, but went on to purge Buchanan, Sobran, Coulter and recently attempted to do the same to Mark Steyn.

NO has been frequently wrong on what conservatism actually is and means for quite some time now. As a result they have frequently misunderstood who stands with conservatism and who stands against it.

Nevertheless, an error about your friends and your enemies is not inherently worse than making the mistake of "no enemies to the right". The fact that a subgroup is "to the right" of a right-leaning group shouldn't make them "off limits" as a target for reproach. Saying they are off limits would be just another way of mistaking your friends and your enemies.

In addition, one of the errors of modern politicking is to mistake the verbal simplification of the spectrum of beliefs as being "Right" and "Left" as constituting the reality of the political spectrum. The reality is that the spectrum needs at a minimum 2 more dimensions to begin to be adequately understood, and using just the one dimension is certain to lead you into mistakes. If you lean rightwards in the one dimension, southwards in the second, upwards in the third, and "prior" in yet another, you can well be extremely opposed to the aims of another group slightly to the right of you, but far north, downwards, and "future" skewed. Treating them as nearly aligned merely because they are nearly aligned in one dimension alone is surely a mistake.

Blah, blah, Mike T. The fact is that there is *not anything wrong* with refusing to allow stuff that you think is objectively crazy in the pages (literal or electronic) of your own publication.

Blah, blah, Lydia... The fact is they didn't stop there but hoped to deplatform them and drive them out entirely. Buckley had an intention which was to weed out certain genuinely harmful elements. It just didn't occur to him that the sort of people who are eager to play thought police are also by nature probably not inclined to agree with him on other things. Which is how it came to pass that by the time he died, the NR barely resembled the institution he started.

Nevertheless, an error about your friends and your enemies is not inherently worse than making the mistake of "no enemies to the right".

It ceases to be an error when you keep doing it and the reason why changes from one issue to the next. The one thing most of the Buckleyites' purge targets had in common post-Birchers was that they were unapologetic culture warriors.

Buckley had an intention which was to weed out certain genuinely harmful elements. It just didn't occur to him that the sort of people who are eager to play thought police are also by nature probably not inclined to agree with him on other things.

I believe in shunning. If someone is truly crazy and vile, and if I'm WFB and have influence and can prevent him from being hired in other places in the conservative movement, I'll do it. That's a legit. use of one's own influence. The idea that it's wrong because maybe later on someone will turn it into a movement that will do other things I won't agree with is just a ridiculous example of riding a hobby horse. If someone tells me that, because I won't let people use obscenities on W4 (for example), or salivate over the wonderfulness of "SJW" women getting raped, or what-not, this is going to "start a movement" that will "lead to" some situation forty years from now where someone I would agree with gets fired from his job, I will cheerfully point out that a butterfly's wing flapping may also extremely indirectly contribute to a landslide, that every action of ours, good or bad, has innumerable consequences over which we have no control, that we are responsible for doing what is right ourselves and are not thereby responsible for every consequence via our "starting movements" and the free actions of *completely different people* many years later that do not lie within our own control. And if the person keeps pushing it, I'll cheerfully tell him to betake himself to someplace where it is much warmer in the winter.

Really, this is just another of your red herrings. You seem to have a million of them.

I believe in shunning. If someone is truly crazy and vile, and if I'm WFB and have influence and can prevent him from being hired in other places in the conservative movement, I'll do it.

"Truly crazy and vile" people also deserve a measure of peace and ability to support themselves. I think the Black Panthers are "truly crazy and vile," but it would never occur to me to hound one into unemployment for his beliefs. If his actions merit reaction, let the authorities judge him and prosecute him if it rises to a level of sufficient public concern.

The Church's traditional answer was to voluntarily disassociate with such people and simply not even wish them godspeed. You don't have to hire them. You may even be justified in truthfully reporting their behavior to a potential employer if there is reason to believe the employment will cause issue to them. Otherwise, you aren't shunning, you're just being a sanctimonious stalker.

I will cheerfully point out that a butterfly's wing flapping may also extremely indirectly contribute to a landslide, that every action of ours, good or bad, has innumerable consequences over which we have no control, that we are responsible for doing what is right ourselves and are not thereby responsible for every consequence via our "starting movements" and the free actions of *completely different people* many years later that do not lie within our own control.

They were not many years later. The attempt on Steyn was the only one that didn't happen within Buckley's own lifetime. You make it sound as though Buckley set something in motion that happened well after his time. He died seeing his own successors purging people who otherwise agreed with him.

Truly crazy and vile" people also deserve a measure of peace and ability to support themselves.

If a truly crazy and vile Black Panther is a college professor or a school teacher by trade, does he "deserve" the ability to support himself by teaching in a public university? In a private college to which you give donations, or whose board will actually listen to you? Does he deserve to support himself by teaching history in high school and poison young minds with fake history? Does he deserve to support himself by writing books (getting public or quasi-public entity grants for it) and getting the in-bred college professor collusion trade to promote his book while he promotes theirs? If you have an influential voice that could prevent that?

Skip someone whose (publicly stated) VIEWS are vile, take someone whose actions are: take a repeat seducer / adulterer, who runs the deli in your small town. Does he have a right to support himself by running the deli, if you can influence your friends and family and neighbors not to countenance his operation because he is a wrecker of families and morals? This is what successful shaming does: it makes a person unable to function in his preferred social niche unless he changes. It forces (i.e. urges) him to either change or get out.

Mike, are you saying that this kind of shaming is out of bounds? Is it wrong to use his livelihood as a the lever in which to attack his vile behavior? (How is that any worse than, a mere 200 years ago, putting people in prison for adultery, which took away both their livelihood AND their liberty? Are you against the laws that upheld Christian patriarchal standards back then?)

Well said Tony and Lydia -- it is one thing to demand someone be fired from McDonald's for holding views you disagree with (which would be insane and inappropriate) but it is another when the job itself involves questions of ideological content (i.e. political parties, magazine writers, college professors, etc.)

I don't always agree with the late great Russell Kirk, but here is Buckley describing how the two of them decided to split up their responsibilities in responding to the John Birch society:

Time was given to the John Birch Society lasting through lunch, and the subject came up again the next morning. We resolved that conservative leaders should do something about the John Birch Society. An allocation of responsibilities crystallized.

Goldwater would seek out an opportunity to dissociate himself from the “findings” of the Society’s leader, without, however, casting any aspersions on the Society itself. I, in National Review and in my other writing, would continue to expose Welch and his thinking to scorn and derision. “You know how to do that,” said Jay Hall.

I volunteered to go further. Unless Welch himself disowned his operative fallacy, National Review would oppose any support for the society.

“How would you define the Birch fallacy?” Jay Hall asked.

“The fallacy,” I said, “is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.”

“I like that,” Goldwater said.

What would Russell Kirk do? He was straightforward. “Me? I’ll just say, if anybody gets around to asking me, that the guy is loony and should be put away.”

“Put away in Alaska?” I asked, mock-seriously. The wisecrack traced to Robert Welch’s expressed conviction, a year or so earlier, that the state of Alaska was being prepared to house anyone who doubted his doctrine that fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.

Tony:

What's laughable is that you can locate the original source of purging tactics in the modern recent Right as if they invented the notion. How ridiculous.

Your invention of 'original source' in my statements is like Jeffrey's invention of 'uniquely "modern ideologies"' earlier in response to Mike T: it is really difficult to tell whether you genuinely misunderstand or whether the point is going over your head because you're purposely ducking it and deliberately addressing a straw man.

Mike, are you saying that this kind of shaming is out of bounds? Is it wrong to use his livelihood as a the lever in which to attack his vile behavior? (How is that any worse than, a mere 200 years ago, putting people in prison for adultery, which took away both their livelihood AND their liberty? Are you against the laws that upheld Christian patriarchal standards back then?)

I'm absolutely not against such laws. That's why I said above:

If his actions merit reaction, let the authorities judge him and prosecute him if it rises to a level of sufficient public concern.

As to his views, I am generally opposed to going after anyone for their opinions except where those stated opinions might violate an employment contract (ex racist professor posting in public that ties them to their employer) or that suggests they will not do their job fairly.

The reality is that these extreme, more obvious cases, are fewer than the grey ones where someone nurses a few prejudices that aren't PC, but that doesn't mean they will treat others unjustly. More often than not, that is what you are really policing.

And that of course is where the Twitter mob and its real life counterpart ends up going after all sorts of actually decent people for saying the one wrong thing, and that threat would include probably literally everyone who has posted here.

Think of it like this, Tony. The average person getting thought policed into submission will be a John Derbyshire, not a David Duke.

As to his views, I am generally opposed to going after anyone for their opinions except where those stated opinions might violate an employment contract (ex racist professor posting in public that ties them to their employer) or that suggests they will not do their job fairly.

The reality is that these extreme, more obvious cases, are fewer than the grey ones where someone nurses a few prejudices that aren't PC, but that doesn't mean they will treat others unjustly. More often than not, that is what you are really policing.

OK, this is where I am not following you, Mike. I see that you're OK with attacking illegal behavior with legal punishments (prison, fines). And I see that you're OK with attacking a person socially (i.e. not legal penalties) where it hurts socially (their ability to keep job, etc) for publicly stated views that might impact job or employer. But you seem to think that attacking someone socially for publicly stated views that DON'T somewhat directly impact how you perform your job or your employer's ability to function is by nature out of bounds. And I just don't see why. Having a job - having THAT job - is, inherently, part of acting and reacting within the many social circles that you touch. Your job isn't some sacrosanct area separated from the rest of your social order. To me, it seems obvious: using social pressure to press someone to conform to good social standards is the ORDINARY right tool, speaking generically. No, I don't want to change laws to make it ILLEGAL to socially say stupid things that are denigrating to others, but I am not talking about legal penalties, I am talking about social penalties. But having society (friends, neighbors, prospective employers, prospective contractors) withdraw from socializing with you is PRECISELY what comes of saying and doing socially revolting things.

Perhaps what you are really concerned with is the magnitude of the penalty thus effected versus the magnitude of the (perceived) evil. Once shouting "stupid bitch!" in an open car to a woman driver when she cuts you off should not land you with being hounded and outcast from FB permanently. I agree that because socially imposed penalties are not in any sense regulated they can be out of all proportion to any offense.

Perhaps what you are concerned with, too, is that what appears (to a large portion of the social sphere) as an infraction of social mores is just nonsense and shouldn't be attacked at all, so an innocent guy gets hammered (socially) for nothing he did wrong. This happens all the time in all sorts of venues, and it amounts to a social injustice - I agree.

But neither of these reasons to pause at the evils of social negative pressure amount to a reason to repudiate the tool of social negative pressure altogether. For those are, clearly, EXCESSES that men of good character ought to avoid anyway. People who are balanced in their judgments know that you don't refuse to hire a guy solely because of a trivial and momentary slip of the tongue when he was under tension. Decent people know that you don't hold a mature man's teen-aged minor pecadilloes and charge him (socially) with them when he is 50. But it is just the nature of society that the things that are NOT regulated by a specific office of government sometimes go awry, sometimes harbor injustices. Would you prefer that they be regulated? That way lies the worst forms of statism.

Perhaps, then, what you are noticing is that a large portion, perhaps even a large majority of our society, are likely to indulge either in the evils of excess or the evils of wrong targeting, and people of good and wholesome views and behavior are likely to get the short end of the stick from these sorts. Yes, that's what happens when society becomes degraded in its morals, its sensibilities, and its philosophy. But as far as I can see, to object on that ground to socially applied pressure to conform is as senseless as talking at the tide to hold it back. The only way social pressure WON'T be used if society doesn't exist. All your objection will accomplish is to stop up the mouths of the decent and wholesome, leaving the indecent and degraded the entire social field of interaction.

Besides, you have repeatedly urged that we get directly in the face of liberal extremists like feministas, to yell at them and call them names and so forth. Are you seriously suggesting that a good strong Christian man should walk by feministas picketing his business for its Christian behavior and yell at her, giving her a good what-for, and when he is sitting in his office he hire her to be a secretary because "jobs are off limits" to such pressure?

Perhaps, then, what you are noticing is that a large portion, perhaps even a large majority of our society, are likely to indulge either in the evils of excess or the evils of wrong targeting, and people of good and wholesome views and behavior are likely to get the short end of the stick from these sorts.

The wrong targeting includes a lot of people who hold politically incorrect views like John Derbyshire. Some call him a bigot, others disagree. His former friends helped purge him from conservative public life for the "crime" of writing something very indelicate about black people in response to an equally indelicate article about white people by a black writer. Around that time, Derbyshire pointed out that most of us either hold or have close associates who hold some private prejudices that if made public would not withstand the scrutiny of the sanctimonious mob.

Besides, you have repeatedly urged that we get directly in the face of liberal extremists like feministas, to yell at them and call them names and so forth. Are you seriously suggesting that a good strong Christian man should walk by feministas picketing his business for its Christian behavior and yell at her, giving her a good what-for, and when he is sitting in his office he hire her to be a secretary because "jobs are off limits" to such pressure?

Of course not, but then getting in someone's face and directly dealing with them when they are going after you is a very different thing than thought policing. Suppose a feminist wrote something negative, but not defamatory about you. Should you pursue her private information and try to get her fired for writing against you? Probably not in most cases.

a very different thing than thought policing. Suppose a feminist wrote something negative, but not defamatory about you. Should you pursue her private information and try to get her fired for writing against you? Probably not in most cases.

Oh, I agree. This falls under the heading of identifying what is excessive versus what is reasonable.

But I get the sense that you mean by "thought policing" something more definite than simply "responding to the way someone thinks (and expresses)." This, I suspect, is the real issue in this discussion.

As I reflect, I was NOT considering any special kind of behavior as qualifying for a special term like "thought policing" that is distinct from just reacting negatively when someone says something you don't like. I (and I suspect Lydia) was simply lumping it all together: responding socially to undesirable social stimulus. Just generically. If you are, rather, considering a special sort of behavior than simply responding negatively, then that's the crux of the disagreement.

What sort of "thought policing" behavior did you have in mind? That rightly can be separated from, for example, "slut-shaming"?

To try to be clear: of course I don't approve of the ridiculous PC policing on campuses and in work-places. But then, I can track a very large degree of my disapproval of those specifically to the fact that they are usually excessive or wrongly targeted, or both. If a student uses an expression that is a nasty racial derogatory epithet that has no place in class, the teacher can (and sometimes should) stop it. But he doesn't have to initiate a campus-wide pogrom for a single incident; a simple declaration in class that "I don't permit expressions like that here" is enough social response for a single offense. That is a FORM of "thought policing", even if it's not the form you have in mind. Same for a woman responding to a man jeering at her with inappropriate language: "that language has no place here, learn some manners" is a form of thought policing. So, distinguish, please.

My only regret about the Derbyshire debacle was that he hadn't been fired from NR long _before_ that on entirely _different_ and more solid grounds--viz., his childish, condescending atheism and his despicable comments about the Terri Schiavo case. I would have happily fired him from a conservative publication for those and never suffered a moment's lack of sleep for doing so.

What sort of "thought policing" behavior did you have in mind? That rightly can be separated from, for example, "slut-shaming"?

I mean "thought policing" in the sense that Orwell intended it which ranges from the deliberate targeting of mere dissent, to disproportionate responses, to purging even allies who stray off the reservation.

Notice the lack of irony in this comment by Lydia:

I would have happily fired him from a conservative publication for those and never suffered a moment's lack of sleep for doing so.

Change the target to Matt Walsh. Let's ignore every good thing he's written on issues like abortion and focus on the idiotic things he's written about male and female violence. He has written some equally atrocious garbage like there is literally no reason a man should ever punch a woman, and he straight-facedly included facing a woman with a loaded gun with intent to commit murder.

That is an imbecilic line of argument and tragicomedically out of whack with all moral law regarding violence. However, I would never join a petition that demanded him to be fired for that nonsense because that too is nonsense. The man is more than his position on that issue. He deserves to be called onto the mat in a real debate, not left unemployed. The same held true of Derbyshire.

And now for something lighter...

Would have posted that on the Trump thread but the comments got closed...

Yes, whaddaya know, it does require _good sense_ concerning what writings are firing-worthy or even, for that matter, false. And the position of editor is also different from the position of random person-in-the-world who tries to start a petition. After all, I didn't start a petition about Derbyshire. I just had an opinion. Having aggressive atheists in the stable of frequent writers for NRO, especially such shallow, condescending ones as Derbyshire, was always weird in the extreme. I was hardly the only one to notice the misfit.

I am not debating whether they had any business letting him go over the general quality of his writing, a lack of alignment with their editorial goals, etc. The fact is that's not why they fired him. They fired him because he returned fire on a racist liberal journalist and NRO refused to have his back when he wrote something that as I recall was actually both reasonable and pretty conservative in response. They also didn't just fire him, but half-heartedly joined in the pogrom with a "yayyyy please don't lynch us next...." attitude.

However, I would never join a petition that demanded him to be fired for that nonsense because that too is nonsense. The man is more than his position on that issue. He deserves to be called onto the mat in a real debate, not left unemployed. The same held true of Derbyshire.

I am still not seeing your argument. Not really. If I am the owner and editor in chief and the editor-daily-supervisor of either Matt Walsh or John Derbyshire, and either one of them repeatedly says things that I find outrageous, and that I have TOLD them I find outrageous, even if they "only" say them elsewhere than my magazine, I still might justifiably tell them "I don't want your services here". It's up to me whether their services further the goals I DECIDE TO SET for my outfit. If I get to a point where in my opinion their presence is more of a detriment than a benefit, OUT THEY GO. Justly.

Legally (under "at-will employment), I can fire them for any reason at all (as long as not a proscribed "discrimination" reason) or for NO REASON AT ALL. I can legally fire them because they wore a blue tie that I didn't like. But JUSTLY, (and you did refer this to justice) I cannot fire them for such trivial reasons. (That's one of the reasons I think at-will employment needs to be eradicated.) Justly, I have to have a reason that is proportionate to the act. And I can find that reason in ANY rational determination that "your presence here is more detrimental to MY purposes for this organization than it is a benefit", and that's the end of it. I don't have to extend that justification into "but he's a person, not just a position on an issue". If his insistent position on one issue makes him - the person who insists on spouting stuff that I have told him is going to be detrimental to my purposes for the organization - a detriment, then that IS the just reason. His "person" should have accounted for my organizational objectives, and if he concluded in his person that he needed more to spout his crazy nonsense than he needed to be circumspect about my organization's needs, then by that fact he determined that as a person he needed to spout that drivel more than he needed the job. Firing him is just respecting his determination to find and pursue his own needs as his own person in opposition to mine.

Getting back to "He deserves to be called onto the mat in a real debate, not left unemployed. The same held true of Derbyshire." No employer of a large organization regularly fires people at a first offence unless it is _truly_ egregious, not a trivial matter. They have an operation to maintain. They DO call people on the mat. They do explain how "what you say on this issue matters to me and so it matters to your employment". That's what typically happens. It is pretty unusual for a person to get completely blindsided by something they had no clue was objectionable and fired without a second chance. (In the corridors of think tanks and high-brow publishing, a writer is assumed to be able generally to understand the nuances of the organization's needs; that's why they were hired, they are not numbskulls. If they have to be told the OBVIOUS, then that too is evidence they are not fit for the job.)

But in the case where the boss is actually unreasonable and reacts in a totally exaggerated way by firing, i.e. to the extent of an actual injustice (even if it's legal), then that's what we mean by "excess". And OF COURSE Lydia and I do not endorse such excess. It's wrong. But it's not wrong because the employer told the employee that "I don't like that point of view" and "if you take that point of view publicly there will be repercussions". It's not wrong because the boss made penalties attendant on "thinking wrong" if your actions put your thoughts into effect. It's because the repercussions were not proportionate to the situation. And, (again), to my mind the employer saying "if you take that point of view publicly there will be repercussions" JUST IS a form of thought policing - even if the repercussion is as mild as "I won't choose you as readily for plum assignments that will get you ahead". Are you implying that "soft" repercussions like that do not have a chilling effect on your thought? I've had it happen to me: it does.

I mean "thought policing" in the sense that Orwell intended it which ranges from the deliberate targeting of mere dissent, to disproportionate responses, to purging even allies who stray off the reservation.

Orwell's "policing" was carried out by, ya know, POLICE. That makes it different from purely social penalties. "Deliberate targeting of mere dissent" is exactly what my employer above does, and I don't see what the problem is if the repercussions are proportionate. "Disproportionate responses" are wrong because of the disproportion, not because of targeting dissent or using negative feedback. "Allies" who insist on giving full effect to their own objectives to the detriment of your own are "allies" in one sense but "enemies" in another. Making this clear by putting into effect the natural consequence of their distancing themselves from YOUR objectives is not "purging" in any more than it is cleaning up your organization to achieve your objectives.

If they are conservatives, then they can prove it by not firing people for offending liberals. Anyone who cares more about what the other side thinks than loyalty to their allies is a contemptible little quisling. That is what the firings of these people were about. I believe Steyn's was about his intransigence on the homosexual issues that NRO has grown squishy on.

Now, if you want to align yourself with Mother Jones and the Nation, then have at it. I would not expect them to give such people the time of day. However, if you call yourself a "conservative publication" then you have a basic duty to not bend to the will of liberal popular opinion the moment one of yours says something that offends them. It is incumbent upon you to actually ask whether it is genuinely offensive in its own right, and frankly the NRO's views are laughable on that front.

Furthermore, it also raises the question of precisely what your legitimate editorial goals could be if you are an alleged conservative publication and you are firing people for airing conservative opinions that happen to offend non-conservatives. To me, that sounds a lot more like entryism than anything else.

Orwell's "policing" was carried out by, ya know, POLICE.

Did you read 1984? Because that is actually not really true. The thought police were not just a formal police force but an entire segment of society that uses their positions to defend INGSOC against dissent. It was formal and informal with no clear distinction between the men in uniform and the informants/collaborators who worked hand-in-hand with them in common purpose. You couldn't trust that your boss at some factory was not in fact intending to use his position to advance the goals of the thought police.

That is why we are starting to see such a shift in our society today. Everywhere the SJWs go, they use authority in the same way. They purge dissenters, even liberals. Whether it is authority as an employer, government official, non-profit, etc. they use it much the same way. Gain power, squash dissent, push the dissenters out.

Well, Mike, now you are shifting. Initially in this OT thread (I think it's OT, but it's not my post) you criticized Buckley because, even though he went after people whom he genuinely thought were dangerous, this started a trend such that later, _different_ people fired people just for offending liberals or what-not. My defense there was for firing people, especially from opinion-making jobs, for reasons one genuinely considered serious--such as repeatedly advocating views that the editors deem seriously crazy, unhinged. I maintain that that is _right_ to do, later "trends" carried out by _other_ people be damned.

Now you seem to be saying that you're only objecting to firing people unreasonably "just for offending liberals." But as you acknowledged at the outset, that _wasn't_ Buckley's only reason for his initial firings which started what you call a trend in his publication.

Mike T,

A couple of housekeeping items:

1) Steyn left National Review for a variety of reasons (in his own words), most of which ironically do have to do with the issue of free speech:

http://www.steynonline.com/7437/hair-today-gone-tomorrow

I suspect this little dispute didn't help matters:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/ducks-gays-and-steyn.php

I'm a big, big fan of Steyn and wish he was still writing at National Review. That said, getting rid of a writer at an opinion magazine is a very different kind of action than firing an employee at a software company or a pharmaceutical company because that employee says something that offends the sensibilities of the politically correct.

2) I'm also a fan of Derbyshire, although I think Lydia is right about his atheism. That said, I think you are probably wrong about why National Review 'fired' him (he wasn't on staff to begin with -- he was just a regular contributor.) Everything I read suggests that their own staff really did believe what he wrote was offensive; people like Lowry and Ponnuru and Goldberg had an honest to goodness disagreement over principle with the Derb. I think in this case they were wrong and the Derb wrote something that wasn't really all that offensive, but Derb himself has said that editors are free to hire and fire who they want for their magazines of political opinion -- that's how the business works. And just because on this one issue these folks may have been in agreement with Mother Jones and The Nation doesn't mean they are suddenly allies or friends -- everyone who has their head screwed on straight knows that is not the case.

3) Again, I think we agree on much -- society is drifting in a totalitarian direction away from the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and honored by the broader culture through robust debate, dissent, and tolerance for differing opinions. Now, the Left is rejecting this older, Constitutional model and demanding to impose their own version of the truth on society. Perhaps where we disagree (not sure?) is that at the same time we fight the good fight we should NOT be throwing out all standards of common-sense and Christian decency -- for example, I would not defend the folks tweeting nasty anti-Semitic remarks relentlessly to Jewish conservatives who oppose Trump:

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/704696138666868736

Jeff,

So said Ben Shapiro elsewhere:

"Of course there are legitimate racists and we should target them, We should find them and we should hurt their careers because racism is unacceptable."

And he is shocked, just shocked, when the people he feels entitled to hurt retaliate against him and his allies.

You declare war, be prepared to fight one. You can't simultaneously declare war on the Alt-Right, as he has done recently, and expect them to just stand there. It's almost comical to see the reaction of establishment conservatives like him when they realize that there are actually right wing factions willing to unload both barrels on them in retaliation.

In fact, his recent take on Trump was amusing. Trump is bad not because he's a man of low character, but because Trump actually is an openly European-style nationalist who is rising at a time when Americans are getting fed up with the "proposition nation" and want an actual blood and soil nation.

We keep acting like we have a common societal vision on what these dastardly people who deserve to be policed even look like, when all we keep seeing is a seething mob going from target to target, with no theory of justice except "derp derp, lynch the guy in the FB video."

Yeah, I'm sure Ben Shapiro thinks Trump is bad _not_ because he's a man of low character. Mike, I swear, you have no idea how you come across as *totally unreliable* at summarizing other people's views.

That was bad in reference to his politics, Lydia, or do I have to explicitly spell that out for you? Quoth Shapiro:

Even the revolt against political correctness wouldn’t be enough to put Trump in position to break apart the Republican Party, however. Republicans have railed against political correctness for years — Trump isn’t anything new in that, although he’s certainly more vulgar and blunt than others. No, what truly separates Trump from the rest of the Republican crowd is that he’s a European-style nationalist.

Republicans are American exceptionalists. We believe that America is a unique place in human history, founded upon a unique philosophy of government and liberty. That’s why we’re special and why we have succeeded. In his own way, Trump believes in American exceptionalism much like Barack Obama does — as a term to describe parochial patriotism. Obama infamously remarked in 2009, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Obama meant that dismissively — American exceptionalism is just something we do because we’re American, not because we’re actually special. But Trump means it proudly. His nationalism is a reaction to Obama’s anti-nationalism. It says: “Barack Obama may think America isn’t worthy of special protection because we’re not special. Well, we’re America, damn it, even if we don’t know what makes us special.” According to Trump, we ought to operate off of the assumption that Americans deserve better lives not because they live out better principles or represent a better system, but because they’re here.

This sort of nationalism resembles far more the right-wing parties of Europe than the historical Republican Party. The Republican Party has stood for embrace of anyone who will embrace American values; extreme European right-wing parties tend to embrace people out of ethnic allegiance rather than ideological allegiance. Trump uncomfortably straddles that divide. His talk about limiting immigration has little to do with embrace of American values and much more to do with “protecting” Americans from foreigners — even highly educated foreigners willing to work in the United States without taking benefits from the tax system. It’s one thing to object to an influx of people who disagree with basic constitutional values. But Trump doesn’t care about basic constitutional values. He simply opposes people coming in who aren’t us. There’s a reason so many of his supporters occupy the #altright portion of the Internet, which traffics in anti-Semitism and racism.

Shapiro has criticized the Hell out of Trump for his personality and behavior, but what really upsets him is that Trump might actually be more of a blood and soil nationalist than a proposition nation supporter. Even if he isn't, it's scary for a lot of Republicans to contemplate that there might be a rising nationalism in the native population.

Trump is a bad because he's almost certainly a liar and a con man. The possibility that he might unabashedly take office and put official policy to openly favor the interests of American workers and American businesses over foreigners is not one of them. That he might do so with the same ruthlessness you see in many other industrialized countries is not a vice either.

Peel back the covers, and outside of the church, 90% of the criticism of Trump is just fear of what he represents. The only people who tend to get it right on Trump are Christians who challenge him on his behavior and beliefs.

Mike T,

Interesting Shapiro quote. So what should be the appropriate response to that? Or to his comment about racism? Anti-Semitic tweets? Ridiculous. As I've said before, we don't suddenly decide to jump into the pigsty because it might be fun to roll around in the slop for a bit with all the kooks and haters. I think Shapiro is wrong to fear European-style nationalism and wrong about the link between American values and race; so my answer to him is to engage in argument -- I don't care what he thinks in response I will not stoop to the level of a Twitter troll.

To bring this all back to the OT, we do well to fight to always elevate the discussion and pull people back from their anger and hatred -- robust disagreement between us as fellow citizens is much more healthy than all out metaphorical war with each side trying to destroy careers and silence dissenting voices.

Jeffrey

"Why didn't you wear the button, bigot?"

Have you gotten that one yet? This reminds me of my university where there were always groups trying to get you to wear buttons or bracelets or something for a variety of Leftist causes and were always shocked when I refused:

"What do you mean you don't want a 'meat is murder' wristband?"
"How could you not what a 'support Palestine' button?"
"You don't want a rainbow colored LGBT lanyard? but its free!"

Seriously, it was hard to get to class sometimes without someone insisting you support their ideology. I once told someone who was campaigning for gay marriage that I was against it and the look of utter shook on his face was priceless. I don't think he'd ever heard a differing view before. I'm so glad I graduated last year.

To bring this all back to the OT, we do well to fight to always elevate the discussion and pull people back from their anger and hatred -- robust disagreement between us as fellow citizens is much more healthy than all out metaphorical war with each side trying to destroy careers and silence dissenting voices.

Sometimes the way to elevate the discussion is to make the other side fear dragging it down. There's really no one size fits all solution. When people are being reasonable, engage them reasonably. When you have a case like you had at UM Columbia or a Twitter mob, it is almost always better to play hard ball.

Jeff,

If you thought the Shapiro article was interesting, wait till you read this one:

National Review’s Kevin Williamson believes Donald Trump’s appeals to the white working class are “immoral” because that demographic’s way of life deserves to die out.

In a featured article for the prestigious conservative journal entitled “The FatherFuhrer,” Williamson seeks to rebut criticism that he and other conservatives don’t articulate any policies that would appeal to Trump’s blue collar supporters.

Williamson, a long-time critic of The Donald, essentially agrees that he doesn’t support any policies or rhetoric directly tailored to the working-class — particularly about jobs being taken by outsourcing and immigration — because it would be wrong to do so.

“It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces,” the NR roving correspondent writes. “[N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

He then goes on to make the conclusion that it’s great these communities are dying out because they have a warped morality and are a dead weight on the economy.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible,” the conservative writer says. “The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt [a blue-collar town in New York.]”

With mainstream conservatism like this, I would not blame working class whites for hoisting the sickle and hammer in retaliation.

What a moron. Being white and blue collar means living immorally? Who the heck is this idiot?

“[N]obody did this to them. They failed themselves.”

Well, at least there's a kernel of truth to that: it is white blue-collar union members who, along with liberal elites, white-collar government unions, blacks, socialists, and those generally opposed to morality that have voted for and supported and (at least) tolerated the eradication of public morality, virtues (including civic virtues), and common sense, by the Democratic powers in the government and media and education. Then, when they voted for Republicans, they voted for men who were not actually conservative, nor moral, nor holding to economic common sense and responsibility - RINOs, generally. Little wonder that they got big government and big business in bed with each other, leading to many illegitimate children such a union begets: social ills that are now intractable and cannot be dealt with by a blue-collar family on their own no matter how moral they are or how rightly they vote.

“The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible,” the conservative writer says. “The white American under-class is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt [a blue-collar town in New York.]”

If had written these words and targeted them at the black community, the National Review would have dumped him and denounced him from the roof tops.

The liberal responses I've read to the Williamson article mocked it as sponsored content for U-Haul and then destroyed it for using the venomous combination of "whelping" and "stray dogs".

One wonders whether Williamson has bothered to think his thesis through for 2 minutes. If "the problem" with blue collar communities is that they are in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture, then these vicious, selfish blue collar people will carry their vicious, warped morality with them when they migrate to new places. If THEY are the problem then moving to a new town cannot solve the problem - they remain themselves. They will carry their dysfunctional family ties with them when they plop down in your (better, not evil) neighborhood. They will continue to say and do dank, dysfunctional things in their new abode, continue to be mesmerized by crass entertainment and crass commercialism regardless of their surroundings.

He is also fooling himself if he thinks there is any kind of actual barrier to the very same evils inhabiting "better" locales. It wasn't blue collar people who experimented with divorce in the first 2/3 of the 20th century, it was the upper crust. It wasn't blue collar people who bought into nihilism and degenerate moral standards wholesale and infected media with it, that was the upper crust college kids who did that. It wasn't blue collar women who first experimented with intentionally setting out to create, without shame or apology, a a so-called "single parent 'family' ", THAT took the hubris of the educated "it's all about me" class.

It is true that loss of morals damages the lives of the poor more than it does into the rich: the rich have more disposable wealth which which to pay off the troubles. They have lawyers to buy them out of jail and hard time. They can spend 10 or 20 times as much on doctors to fix their drug-abused bodies. They can pay off 2 or 3 ex-wives, with children, and still have a life. That these slimes are not visibly hurting the way vice hurts blue collar people, isn't to be laid at any virtue of theirs, it is to be laid at their wealth and (to an extent) status.

If "the problem" with blue collar communities is that they are in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture, then these vicious, selfish blue collar people will carry their vicious, warped morality with them when they migrate to new places. If THEY are the problem then moving to a new town cannot solve the problem - they remain themselves. They will carry their dysfunctional family ties with them when they plop down in your (better, not evil) neighborhood. They will continue to say and do dank, dysfunctional things in their new abode, continue to be mesmerized by crass entertainment and crass commercialism regardless of their surroundings.

It's almost like the dirt has no magical properties and it's the people, both their blood and their culture (often reinforcing each other), that has more to do with that. Why we can't dare suggest that if the people of Zimbabwe and Japan swapped geography that Africa would be host to an economic super power within 2 generations and the Japanese home islands the scene of the world's largest mass starvation.

Mike T,
That's what I deserve for mildly defending Trump supporters. The GOP primary has been like The Shawshank Redemption, only with more tunneling through sewage and no redemption.

Hey, Step2, you know how they say that virtue is its own reward? Does that work in the negative, too? :-)

You probably think that my comment was intended as a racist dig at the population of Zimbabwe, but the truth is that you couldn't teleport all of Nigeria to Zimbabwe and vice versa and expect the population of Zimbabwe to suddenly overcome their problems. Race is very crude, very high level discussion of population differences. It is at best a starting point only. Just as the Nigeria/Zimbabwe swap wouldn't work, you couldn't do a swap between Harlan County and San Francisco and expect any good to come out of it.

The group differences are what they are and exist why they do for reasons beyond our immediate control and will. What makes guys like Williamson so problematic is that they beat on these groups and demand things that might be almost impossible for them. Certainly an emotional and mental tyranny in some cases as they have to put all of their effort into doing what comes naturally to guys like him.

His hate for those populations less capable than his milieu is rooted in his egalitarianism. I half expect him to scream at a man with a 90 IQ "go to college, major in something that pays well" without any appreciation for the fact that the man just wasn't born with enough mental horse power to make that happen. You know why? He said "get a job" without even noting that many of these people can't find work, those that can are losing it to outsourcing under NAFTA and similar deals and for many of them relocating just puts more pressure on them to compete against people better equipped than them.

Meritocracy works until you realize that a lot of "merit" is just unearned grace and advantage. Merit has its place, but it is quite lethal to the common good when elevated to the pedastalized position guys like Williamson put it on through their egalitarianism.

Mike, you touch on a point I have thought about for a while. An "advanced" society, with high-tech jobs and high-tech machinery and commerce...and high-tech sophistication in managing day to day ordinary tasks, is hell on those who aren't ready for that level of sophistication. On those at an IQ of 80 or 85, or even 90 (at least in some areas of life). On people who can't manage enough sophistication to handle "the system". If the only way you can find a job is to navigate the shoals of internet job searches, with all of the requirements to weed out the junk information to narrow it down to real information that can actually be used, where does that leave a person who can't do that? If you can't manage on-line banking, how are you going to deal with an employer who pays by debit card or with direct deposit? Worse, how are you going to survive identity theft without drowning? Is a high-tech meritocracy society a society that has no place for the simple, the unsophisticated, for those who attend well to a concrete physical task but not so well to an abstract task? What are we to tell the 20% + of people with IQ below 90, that they can't work because the smart ones can't be bothered to structure work that they can do well?

I realize this isn't my thread, but I suggest that maybe we stop talking about Williamson's alleged psychology among a group of people when his original article is behind a paywall (I wasn't able to read more than the first paragraph or two, which were not the ones everybody is getting upset about) and his follow-up did not support the "hatred" and blah, blah that are being attributed to him? Not to mention that it's questionably relevant to the main post.

That would be my suggestion. Tony, I suggest that you never accept at face value Mike T's characterization of what someone else thinks. Mike T's penchant for wild psychologization and misrepresentation is really a wonder to behold. Not that he doesn't believe what he says about what people believe. I think he does. But that doesn't mean anybody else should.