Lean to the Left, Lean to the Right

 

Stephen LeDrew argues, intending to be provocative, that Justin Trudeau is a right-winger compared to Pierre Poilievre. 

He is right, based on the traditional meaning of the term. Traditionally, since the French Revolution, the left was for liberty, for the individual, for free choice, free markets, and smaller government; and against established elites. The right was for the corporate state, for paternalistic government, for more social control, was respectful of elites and authority, and for bigger government.

That puts our modern right on the left, and our modern left on the right.

This is indeed more philosophically coherent than our common current understanding, which is scrambled by Marxism. This puts Marxism, Trudeau, the NDP, and the US Democrats, on the right-wing. Stalin, Castro and Mao were right wingers. Pierre Poilievre, Maxime Bernier, Milton Friedman, Rand Paul, Tim Poole, the Koch Brothers, and more or less the US Republicans, are the left. As am I. 

We have stood everything on its head when we suggest the US is politically to the right of Canada or Europe. From its inception, by those who rejected the American revolution to stick with king and tradition, Canada has always been conservative to its core. America wants life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Canada wants peace, order, and good government. A decent summary of liberalism and conservatism, left and right.

But the problem is that many get confused and, I suspect like LeDrew, vote Liberal and support Democrats imagining they are left-wing in the true sense. And imagining the right stands for autocracy. Indeed, I think the reason we have gotten these terms garbled is that the Liberals and Democrats have been trying to trick people into believing this. Marxism is less popular. So instead of identifying as Marxist, they began calling their ideas “liberal.”

The Political Spectrum

I put my stock in Locke

I have never referred to myself as a “conservative.” I am not. I am a lifelong liberal.

That used to put me on the left of the political spectrum. But now, everything that is not Marxist is considered “right-wing.”

Since Marx has been positively disproven, that more or less means that anyone who is simply lucid is now “right-wing.” Our politics have become that distorted. 

Marx brothers.

There is something deeply symbolic here about the US Democrats rushing to nominate for their presidential candidate someone who is obviously suffering dementia. There is something symbolic about their almost phobic reaction to a seemingly sincere candidate like Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie Sanders in favour of an obvious huckster. Honesty and sanity are clear and present dangers.

But liberalism and conservatism are different philosophies, which used to represent the opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Liberalism believes in the political philosophy of John Locke: democracy, equality, human rights. It wants definite limits on government power. It advocates free trade and free markets. The core idea is free choice: man exists to make moral choices, and human dignity accordingly demands that free individual choice must be wherever possible respected. It is generally opposed to foreign entanglements; it does not like the discipline of military culture on principle, and given human equality, other nations need to be free to settle their own affairs. 

Perhaps the founding philosopher of modern conservatism: Edmund Burke.

While not in opposition to this, conservatism has no special interest in democracy, equality, or human rights. It sees the state as an organic entity, like a family. Like a family, it is the duty of the more capable to look after the less capable, as parents might look after children. This rejects equality intrinsically; it means democracy may well also need to be set aside, and human rights. The rights of a child are limited, even if there are more children than adults in the family.

Conservatism sees no formal limits to the power or involvement of the state. The state is there to help as needed, and should do whatever is required. Nevertheless, it would generally prefer non-state solutions. The state is there to preserve and support the culture, and if the culture is healthy, the state has less need to intervene. A healthy culture means a balance of interests, with respect for traditional institutions which have developed organically.

Conservatism believes in an active foreign policy, on the premise that the state has a duty to do its part to preserve international peace, just as neighbours have the duty to look after neighbours. Again, not believing in human equality, it holds that a healthy and a wealthy nation may have a moral obligation to intervene elsewhere to help a less-advantaged population. It prefers favouring local producers over free trade, and sees no problem with government intervening in the market to pursue national interests.

Sometimes modern liberals brand themselves “libertarian.” I do not use this term for myself, because it implies a rigid adherence to liberal principles, and I see good arguments on both sides. In a given situation, I can be persuaded that the conservative policy is better. And there is something intrinsically wrong with being doctrinaire, rather than debating and considering each situation on its merits.

But what does the modern “left” believe? Like conservatives, the Marxist left has no natural interest in either democracy or human rights. Nominally, it sacrifices both to equality. Yet the Marxist concept of “equality” is actually the conservative idea of class difference: that the capable must care for the less capable as if they were children. The “capable” for Marxists meaning the bureaucrats, the professions, or the “vanguard” of intellectuals.

Classical Marxism would and did oppose foreign entanglements, and modern leftists most often do, although inconsistently. Wars exist, in their minds, only to benefit the ruling class. They are supposedly always about “oil,” by which they seem to mean, more specifically, more profits for some oil company. Apparently ordinary people do not need oil, and are oppressed by it.

Marxists not only see no natural limits on the power of the state; Marxists want the state to aggressively appropriate power from all other traditional institutions. This dramatically distinguishes them from either conservatives or liberals. The premise is that all existing traditions exist to perpetuate inequality and buttress the ruling class. Marxists want the state to aggressively destroy the culture as a whole, on the same premise. The classical idea is, of course, that on the rubble a government-free, truly equal society will spontaneously emerge.

This is all rather like a farmer imagining that, if he kills all his livestock and burns all his crops, infinitely better crops and better livestock will spontaneously appear.

Modern Marxists, or at least the modern left, oppose free trade as well. The premise is that free trade helps the rich and harms the poor. This premise seems perfectly arbitrary in Marxist terms, since foreign workers are working class too, and poor people benefit from cheaper manufactures more than the rich, but this is where it stands currently.

And they are aggressively in support of open borders and large-scale immigration, which seems to directly contradict their stance on free trade.

Nevertheless, this contradiction seems less important than the hope that a large influx of people from elsewhere will degrade traditional non-government institutions and traditions, like church, neighbourhood, manners, or family.

I said at the beginning that Marxism has been positively disproven. I do not only mean the conventional argument that everywhere it has been tried it has led to eventual economic stagnation or collapse, and genocide. It has, but that experiment need never have been tried even once. It was already disproven on its own terms before Lenin detrained at the Finland Station.

Marx claimed a scientific basis for his theories. That means they are falsifiable: Marx made certain definite predictions, and if they did not come true, the theory was wrong.

They have not come true.

Marx predicted that over time, a smaller and smaller group of “capitalists” would become wealthier and wealthier, while more and more people would descend to the proletariat, living on wages for manual labour, and this large mass of the population would become poorer and poorer. 

Despite all the Marx-inspired current talk of “income inequality” in the US, this has not happened. The class of people owning the means of production has instead steadily grown, fewer and fewer people are members of the proletariat, and the proletariat itself has become steadily better off.

Marx predicted that the revolution, and the transition to socialism, was a natural evolution, and so would come first to the most industrialized and developed countries. Instead, Marxist revolutions have consistently been in poorer and less developed areas: Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, here and there in Latin America or Africa. And they have tended to collapse into “capitalism” over time. While Marxist parties have had some electoral success in the developed world, it has been hit and miss, and no evolutionary trend seems evident. If anything, their proportion of the popular vote seems in decline. At the same time that Marxism has been growing in influence on the left, the left as a whole seems to have been shrinking. Two words: Jeremy Corbyn.

Marx predicted that, given the intrinsic structural problems in capitalism, over time periodic recessions and depressions would become worse, until the system collapsed. Instead, touching wood, our recessions and depressions have become less severe since the 1930s.

That being so, why is it that Marxism still holds such power over the left, seemingly growing year over year?

I think Marxism thrives as an amoral alternate explanation of society; a trait it shares with that other amoral asteroid-challenged theoretical dinosaur that refuses to lie down and die, Freudianism. If you embrace Marxism, you are free to reject all “bourgeois” moral restraints.

Put it all together, and modern leftism is both a serious mental illness and a dangerous social disease.

Lean to the Left, Lean to the Right, Stand Up...

The face of Canada's most leftist province...

The talking heads remain relentless in insisting that the Canadian Conservatives must move left to be electable.

This is demonstrably false.

Where in Canada is the electorate supposedly most left-wing? Quebec? Quebec just elected a right-of-centre party provincially.

Ontario? Ontario twice elected Mike Harris, whose government was about as far right as Canada has seen. They just elected Doug Ford on a right-wing platform.

Okay, not Ontario as a whole, but Toronto specifically? The 416?

They elected Rob Ford mayor. And Mel Lastman before him.

When the Conservative Party chose Stephen Harper, he was from the right wing of that party, long in opposition. He was supposed to be too far right to be electable.

So, of course, was Ronald Reagan in the US. He’s the last candidate to have won a presidential election in a landslide—took every state but Minnesota.

Boris Johnson just won such a landslide in Britain. And who was the last candidate to win a landslide of similar proportions in the UK? Margaret Thatcher. Unambiguously right-wing Margaret Thatcher.

The evidence could hardly be clearer. Taking a strong right-wing position is an electoral winner, not a loser. Pose “right-wing” positions as individual issues in a survey, and most people agree with them.

The issue is sincerity. People want someone who will do as they say. Someone who will lead. Someone who is not conning them for votes, and who will only end up doing whatever is in the interests of the existing bureaucracy.

All this said, I see no candidate, nor obvious potential candidate, who could embody this in the current Conservative leadership contest.

Could have been Max.

Wars and Rumours of War

Aunty Fascist.

I think it is indisputable that we, in Europe, America, and Oceania, “the West,” or “Western civilization,” are now in a state of cold civil war. Normal discourse is being shut down, and this must lead to violence. To an extent, violence has already started, with gangs like Antifa in the streets.

I also think there is no question who is the aggressor in this war: the “left.” It is the left that has been trying to shut down civil discourse; this is demonstrable. They are shouting down, censoring, passing “hate speech” laws, banning, boycotting, and unfriending.

Not all wars are contests of good against evil. But in the normal course of things, contrary to popular belief, most are. If both parties are of good heart, things can almost certainly be worked out without violence. A war that is simply a “misunderstanding” is improbable.

When this is the case, when it is good against evil, it is generally the party of evil who begins the war. It is not that starting a war is evil in itself, as is often claimed, but that it is the side with a losing argument who will want to shut down debate and resort to force. As a desperation measure, because otherwise they will lose the debate.

And it is usually the party of evil, or the party that begins the war, who loses it. That is, given that the parties are reasonably equally matched--this rule cannot apply if, for example, the British Empire invades Easter Island with a dozen ships of the line.

It sounds crazy, but it makes sense. First, there is the logic of the ordeal or duel: the assumption behind these practices was that the human conscience would strengthen the arm and aim of one who knew they were in the right. Second, the side that lacks justification is going to war as a desperation measure; because they know they will lose the argument. As they go to war in desperation, they may well go to war against the odds.

The obvious historical example is the Second World War. Granted that Stalin was as bad, overall, as Hitler, I think there is no room to dispute that right was on the side of the Western Allies against the Nazis. And I think the argument is compelling that Hitler, and Japan, went to war with little chance of winning from the outset. It is as though in a fit of suicidal rage they just wanted to take down as many people with them as possible.

I think, contrary to much opinion, that the same was true of the First World War. Germany was morally in the wrong, advancing an ideology of social Darwinism, Germany and Austria were the aggressors, first declaring war, and Germany and Austria lost.

American Civil War: begun by the South by firing on Fort Sumter. They were obviously morally in the wrong, to the extent that they were fighting to preserve slavery, they started a war that, in terms of relative economic and military strength, they had little chance to win, and they lost the war they had begun.

Franco-Prussian War: France declared war on Prussia for no good reason but grandeur and to check German power. France lost.

Punic Wars: who started them is unclear; but the Carthaginians practiced child sacrifice, and so were clearly in the moral wrong as a civilization. And they lost.

The left, I think on this basis, is doomed to lose this current civil war. And I believe, as I have said before, that the real underlying issue is abortion, and the supposed right to unrestricted sex. It is only a matter of how much blood they can spill in the effort.

Once they lose, I think we can expect the world to return to a healthy course and reconstruct.

"Why I Am a Progressive" [Sic]

Edmund Burke

That prolific scribbler Arthur Unknown recently posted a piece on Facebook on “Why I am a Progressive.” It is an interesting insight into how the distaff side thinks. Here with my reactions:

“I'm a progressive, but that doesn't mean what a lot of you apparently think it does.

“Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: Not every progressive is the same, not every progressive is a Democrat, not every progressive is a liberal! The majority of progressives I know think along roughly these same lines:”

Note this initial inconsistency: he asserts that not all progressives think alike—but this is what they all think. Diversity is for appearances only.

“1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.”

This is the traditional conservative position, not something that puts him on the left. The duty of society to care for its weakest members is the core of Edmund Burke’s philosophy, considered definitive of what we now call “conservatism.” The first “welfare state” was introduced in Germany by Bismarck—an arch-conservative monarchist. The left was slower to come to this position, although it is there now.

“2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as ‘I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.’ This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes ‘let people die because they can't afford healthcare’ a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.”

It is nonsensical to declare health care a right; because it is certain that in some cases, it will be unaffordable. Consider, for example, if someone discovers a cure for the common cold; but an effective dose costs a million dollars a pill to manufacture. So everyone has an inherent right to it when they have a cold? Where does the money come from?

That bit of political cant out of the way, believing in a government health-care system does not put you on the left either. The first president to push for one in the US was Richard Nixon, a centrist Republican. But he could not get it through a Democratic Congress. In Canada or in Britain, you will not hear conservative parties calling for it to be dismantled. The US Republicans are currently promising to come up with their own plan, but cannot get together on details. The only debate is how to do it most cheaply and efficiently. The right tends to want to preserve elements of choice and the free market for this reason.

“3. I believe education should be affordable and accessible to everyone. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.”

The author is agreeing with Milton Friedman, generally considered to be the patron saint of the modern American right. At least, he believed this for degrees in the Humanities, for which there was less prospect of the student being able to repay from future income. Equality of opportunity, core value of the right, more or less assumes equal access to education ought to be the case. The question is only how best to do it. Because, again, money does not fall from the sky. The right, again, wants to preserve elements of choice and the free market, as with vouchers, again to ensure efficiency. Otherwise there would be no check on rising college costs, and, one way or another, the average guy has to pay for it. There is no such thing as “free” college.

“4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow, extreme right wing conservatives believe that makes me a communist.”

This is again the classical Burkean conservative position: society has a duty to care for the less fortunate.

But so long as everyone has their needs met, inequality of wealth is not itself a problem. Inequality of wealth is a sign of a healthy and progressive economy. When new things are invented, for example, first adopters will have a temporary economic advantage, and so will accumulate wealth. Inequality of wealth MAY be due to some gaming of the system, but if so, it is the gaming that is the problem, not the inequality itself.

I doubt there is anyone starving to death due to lack of money in Canada or the US. People do freeze to death on the streets, but this seems to be due not to lack of money, but because of either addiction, mental illness, or abuse/persecution by others.

Raising welfare payments is not going to help this.

“The wealthy paying their share” is empty sloganeering. Everybody wants everyone to pay their share; there is not a big constituency for being “unfair.” The disagreement is over what their fair share is.

And, of course, no matter their income level, everyone assumes that “the wealthy” means those who make more than they do.

“5. I don't throw around ‘I'm willing to pay higher taxes’ lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.”

There is an unexamined third possibility here: that their tax dollars might go to lining the pockets of bureaucrats, wealthy government-hired professionals, and government employees.

“6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.”

Such circumstances are certainly undesirable. But you cannot fix this by legislating that employers must pay a minimum wage. Because, yet again, money does not drop from the skies. If you raise the cost of labour, you are killing jobs, reducing services, reducing competition and consumer choice, and raising prices to consumers. The poorest will be most harmed.

“7. I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law. I'm not ‘offended by Christianity’ -- I'm offended that you're trying to force me to live by your religion's rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That's how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don't force it on me or mine.”

It would help if the author could cite an example of any legislator trying to “legislate Scripture into law,” or “trying to impose biblical law.” I’ve never heard of such a thing in my lifetime. Morality is objective and binding on all; Christians do not believe it comes from the Bible. Nobody believes that it was okay to murder before Moses went up Sinai and got the discouraging word from Yahweh.

One might, to be fair, try to legislate ritual law, as opposed to objective morality. This has been done in places and at times: making it mandatory, for example, to attend church on Sunday. But who is proposing such things in America or in Canada today?

While it is possible that the present author is indeed not prejudiced against Christianity, it seems to me that the modern left generally is. One example from today’s news: a Catholic adoption agency is being forced to close because it will not place children in gay foster homes. Here the interests of orphans are being sacrificed purely for the chance to deny religious freedom.

“8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you.”

This might not be Burkean conservatism, but it is bedrock liberalism, and liberalism is commonly classed these days as on the right, not the left. Sargon of Akkad, Carl Benjamin, for example, is consistently referred to in the mainstream press as “far right” for being a classic liberal.

All men are created equal, and have the right to equal treatment before the law. That is the liberal position.

The common objection on the right currently is that LGBT people are not treated equally, but are given special rights and privileges: such as a right not to be criticized for promiscuity, a right to parade nude in public, a right to cohabit without being declared married by common law, a right to demand you address them in a certain fashion, a right to your services at their wedding whether this violates your conscience or not, and so forth.

In fact, although no one is calling for it, true equality before the law would be served even if there were still laws against sodomy, as there were in Canada until 1967 or 1968. Such laws apply equally to all. Not all of us have an urge to have sex with another man, true. But not all of us have an urge to have sex with children, either, or to rape, or to murder. This does not amount to a reason to rescind all laws against pederasty or rape or murder as discriminatory. The issue is whether homosexuality is socially harmful or not. If it is not, while it may be sinful, it is not the business of the state.

Taking the matter any further than that is nothing but a cudgel against religious liberty.

“9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're ‘stealing’ your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I'm not opposed to deporting people who are here illegally, but I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).”

This is more empty sloganeering unless and until the author has some specific policy suggestions for what would be a more humane, but still effective, approach. We all want the most humane policies; if he is implying otherwise, this is only raw bigotry on his part.

He also seems to be making the common philosophical error of confusing an “is” with an “ought.” It is perfectly true that people should not hire illegals, and illegal aliens should not be eligible for free education, welfare, or the vote. But this does not mean it does not happen. It commonly does, often with official collusion. Were this not so, we would soon have no illegals in the USA. They would not come, and if they came, they then could not survive.

“10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cutting corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.”

This, if not duplicitous, is profoundly naïve. What magic ensures that, while greed is supposedly endemic in the private sector, it is absent from the government sector that makes such regulations?

Even if it were, if government is going to regulate a given industry, who then must they turn to to decide on the proper regulations? They must turn to those with expertise in that industry. In other words, to those already powerful in that industry. Any government regulation is therefore carte blanche for an established elite to protect their interests against the general public.

Allowing matters instead to be determined by the free market protects the public interest. Without government interference, if some company puts out a product that is shoddy or overpriced, or that pollutes the environment, consumers can stop buying, and that company goes out of business. Start to regulate, and consumers no longer have recourse if they are harmed--short perhaps of expensive and risky class action suits, not available to the poor.

“11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.”

This statement is flatly insane, in the proper sense of the term; it is in defiance of logic and evidence. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome, as the bizarre affliction has come to be called.

There is nothing remotely fascist about the Trump administration in comparison to past American administrations. The author is probably aware of this, since he cites no examples to back his assertion.

On the other hand, the “progressive” “resistance,” at least some of those who are opposed to Trump, are often distinctly fascist. Postmodernism plus multiculturalism and the hostility to “cultural appropriation” which characterize large swathes of the modern left are simply Nazi race theory, no more and no less; I explain this elsewhere. Antifa is proudly using the same violent tactics as Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts: street brawling, shouting down opponents, intimidation for political ends. An NDP candidate in the last Ontario election openly endorsed Hitler’s tactics, and was not censured by her party.

“12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.”

I agree that racism in America, and in Canada, is rapidly getting worse. But all this racism is on the left. Ideas of “white privilege” and legal measures to combat it are an example. This is an open violation of the principle of human equality, an open program of racial discrimination. Laws must not discriminate based on skin colour.

The claim, moreover, that the system is secretly rigged for the benefit of “whites,” is cousin to Nazi claims about the Jews. This is Protocols of the Elders of Zion territory. As is talk of a supposed “patriarchy.”

Not incidentally, the modern left also seems to be growing increasingly anti-semitic and anti-Asian. Anyone might be next. First they came for the “whites,” …

“13. I am not interested in coming after your guns, nor is anyone serving in government. What I am interested in is sensible policies, including background checks, that just MIGHT save one person’s, perhaps a toddler’s, life by the hand of someone who should not have a gun. (Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine).”

Again, sloganeering. Can our present author point to someone who speaks against “sensible” gun policies? Who does not want the rules that will save lives? The debate is about what is sensible. And this is a debate our author does not want to have. He expressly refuses here to read or consider the opinions of others. Might makes right? Whoever has the gun, makes the rules?

“14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?”

If political correctness were simply politeness, nobody would object. But I challenge the present author to find any of the demands of contemporary political correctness in any established authority on good manners: in Emily Post, say, or Amy Vanderbilt. He will not find them.

His one stated principle, that it is politeness to address everyone as they would like to be addressed, is false. What the addressee prefers to be called is no more intrinsically likely to be polite or appropriate than what the addressor prefers. A chief of protocol does not ask the guest how he would like to be introduced: he consults the manual for the correct form. Being addressed bestows no moral superiority or special wisdom. It might as well be that he illegitimately wants to be addressed as “Milord,” or “King Charles the Third,” or “M.D.,” or “Aryan superman.” Or, for that matter, “she” when he is a man, or “African” when she is white.

“15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.”

This is again objectively mad, if by “sustainable energy” he is referring to such things as wind power and solar power. The one sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, given present technology, is a move to nuclear. Is that what he means? Because in my experience, the left in general is opposed to building nuclear power plants. They also reject the next best option, putting up more hydro dams.

Billionaires, of course, have no commitment to oil or coal. As this author admits, they can just as easily shift their investments to solar or nuclear. It is not because of their supposed nefarious influence that we stick with fossil fuels. Supposing otherwise is just comic-book level Marxism.

“16. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?”

True equality before the law would mean no alimony, no favouring the mother in child custody cases, no “affirmative action,” women being drafted in war for front-line combat. And no laws against sexual harassment or rape—even if sex is not specified, these obviously have disparate impact. Something would also have to be done not just about men dominating the top of the corporate ladder, but equally about men dominating the prison population. If the one proves discrimination, so does the other.

There are two fair options here: either a return to men and women having different social roles, but roughly equivalent and balanced rights and privileges; or equality before the law. What we have now is systemic favouritism towards women and discrimination against men.

And so you have it. The right generally gives the left credit for simply being naïve, rather than deceitful, in believing such things as Arthur says he does here.

The Oppression Olympics

My cargo-shifted-to-port pal Cyrus, not to be confused with Xerxes, sought the other evening to explain why the left seemed to spin on a dime from being irreconcilably opposed to Islam for oppressing women to making the extirpation of “Islamophobia” one of its main policies. He acknowledges the inconsistency, but suggests that, once the left identifies a group as oppressed, they immediately tend to overlook any faults, perhaps as overcompensation.

That seems admission enough—but also leads to the next question. How are Muslims in general an oppressed group?

His response seemed to me tentative: “colonialism.”

Problem: if the issue is having been colonized, and recently, Muslims are simply in the same situation as just about everyone else in the world. So why this special concern for Muslims, and not for Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Bahais, or Christians? Granted that some European countries—England, one or two others—have not been colonized in recent times. Neither has Muslim Turkey.

Moreover, Muslims have been up to quite recent times among the world’s most eager colonizers themselves. In principle, for Islam, empire is the proper form of government. The Ottoman Empire, which in the 19th century still held large swaths of Christian Europe, ended only in 1922. Muslim Indonesia allowed independence to Christian Timor-Leste only in 2002. Muslim Sudan allowed independence to Christian South Sudan only in 2011. Muslim Mauritania became the last country in the world to legally abolish slavery in 1981, following soon after Saudi Arabia and Oman. Reports are that slavery continues de facto in Muslim Libya.

Strictly speaking, on balance, Muslims are probably the single least-historically-oppressed demographic in the universe; with perhaps the exception of the English, Germans, French, or Russians.

Which brings up the wider question, how many other of the left’s supposedly “oppressed” client groups are in fact not oppressed? If the left is wrong here, are they wrong in other cases?

I think they are systematically wrong. While, granted, some of their client groups have been historically oppressed or discriminated against, this would have been in the past, not in the present. It was other people at another time. Almost by definition, once there is a consensus that a given group has been oppressed, that oppression must be over. Because nobody at all is prepared to admit they are oppressing anyone. The left is, at best, always in the business of urgently pouring water on fires that have been out for generations. While other fires blaze untended.

Who currently is genuinely oppressed? Falun Gong. Christians in the Middle East. Christians in China and North Korea. Yazidis. Jews in Europe and the Middle East. Kurds. Muslims in China. White South Africans. Is the left interested in doing anything to help?

Not a bit.

Klavan Unchained

Andrew Klavan really came out smoking yesterday. He says the left has gone mad.

The same thought has occurred to me. Things the left is saying now would surely be considered delusional if suggested by any lone individual, say, five years ago. And they are not just saying these things: they are demanding and requiring unanimous consent to them.

A sure sign they know themselves these things are not true.

I think things may be at or beyond a tipping point.

Some Ideas Are Just Bad Ideas

Antifa debating their position.

Good news seems to be coming thick and fast. The day before yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince reportedly made an agreement with the Vatican to allow the building of Christian churches.

With that, and now that women can drive, it almost makes me want to be back in the Kingdom.

Except that the money is no longer there. The price of oil is still way down. The US is now on track to be the world’s top exporter of oil. Aside from prompting KSA to open to the world, this chokes off funding to radical Islamic movements. It also cuts the funding that has enabled Vladimir Putin to engage in his foreign adventures in Syria and the Ukraine.

Before he was elected, Trump promised that, if they chose him, Americans would win so much, they would get tired of winning. Big talking blowhard, right?

Incredibly, he actually seems on track with that promise.

It is not just foreign affairs—although, in foreign affairs, we also have North Korea just recently calling suddenly for denuclearization and reunification. That’s quite a shift. And ISIS is now all but gone in Syria and Iraq.

Everyone has been worrying about traditional jobs all disappearing; it looks inevitable, giving the emerging technologies. Yet US unemployment just dropped to 3.9%, lowest since 2000. The biggest drop was among blacks and Hispanics.

Can Trump really be that good? It seems more likely that, in fact, Obama was that bad.

In her day Margaret Thatcher boldly said that the ideas of the left are “simply wrong.” On the evidence, it looks as though she was right, and is still right. The positions of the left are almost systematically wrong, naive, or unrealistic. For example, to take a recent example, believing that carbon taxes, by raising the cost of carbon, would mean we use less of it. Yet raising the minimum wage could have no effect on levels of employment. Or believing that one’s “gender” is purely a matter of choice, yet gender discrimination is real and a serious problem. After all, nobody chooses his or her gender...

It doesn’t seem just a matter of opinion, on which reasonable, moral, and sharp minds can differ. It seems to be logical nonsense and objectively demonstrable.

For thirty years, Ontario was run by a Tory provincial government, and Ontario government bonds were blue chip. In those days, we would grumble about blue laws, rent controls, and unnecessary government regulation; but there was no question at least that the place was well run from a managerial perspective. The provincial finances were always in blue chip territory. Then the Liberals got in, followed a cycle later by the NDP, and the provincial finances rapidly went sour. Now Ontario is a have-not province, with a staggering public debt.

The same phenomenon is seen across the US: there is a reason why the rust belt is in decline, and industries have all been moving to the sun belt. Check which party has been in power at the city and state level in either case for the past forty years.

Or look what happened to New York City when they finally, after many years, elected a relatively right-wing Republican mayor in Rudy Guiliani. The turnaround seemed almost miraculous―like Trump.

I offer an illustration that effected me personally. I was in Ontario, doing quite well as a technical writer and editor, running my own business, when, in 1990, the NDP government came in. They passed a law requiring that any company in the province with more than 50 employees must employ a certain percentage of women. This in an economy that was, due to other NDP policies, already contracting.

This made Ontario businesses in general less efficient and less competitive—employees could no longer be hired on merit. But it was especially devastating in my profession and in my industry. As everyone probably knows, qualified and talented female programmers, engineers, and technologists are thin on the ground. Yet high-tech firms had to somehow meet these quotas without getting wiped out by competition from elsewhere in the fast-moving, intensely competitive high-tech market.

The solution was obvious: take all technical writing in-house, and hire only women to do it. Given that women have, on average, better verbal skills than men, this was the one area where they were least likely to put the firm at a critical competitive disadvantage.

As a result, overnight, by government fiat, the field of technical writing in Ontario became open only to women.

I had to either change career or move. As it happened, I did both.

A terrible financial and personal loss for me; but also, a terrible loss of talent, competitiveness, and expertise to the provincial economy.

This largely explains political correctness. If you have good arguments, you welcome public debate. When you know your arguments and your policies cannot withstand scrutiny, you want to avoid any public debate.

The Left Finds Religion

A couple of silly posts are circulating on Facebook at the moment. Leftists are claiming Jesus as one of their own.

This may be a good sign. In recent years the left has had nothing good to say about Jesus. It seems like a defensive move; as though they feel a need either for outreach or to justify themselves. It beats just calling all Christians “deplorable.”

But they sure do get things garbled. Let us assume they do this honestly. I guess such misapprehensions are possible, if you never read the Bible.

Taking the claims one by one:

“Homeless”: yes, Jesus was homeless. But this was a matter of religious observance, like a mendicant Buddhist monk, so it is probably not fairly comparable with the situation of people who are homeless due to poverty. He certainly did make clear, on the other hand, his concern for the poor.

“Palestinian”? This is a worse howler than, say, calling St. Nicholas “Turkish,” or St. Patrick “English.” There was not such place as “Palestine” in Jesus’s time, and the people we currently call “Palestinians”—Palestinian Arabs—were not in the area. Jesus was a Jew who lived in what is now Israel. You want to call Netanyahu a “Palestinian”?

“Anarchist”? Jesus was asked about paying taxes, and said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Showing, at the same time, a coin with Caesar’s face on it. He said “My kingdom is not of this world.” He was not a political figure. He accepted the civil authority of his day as given. There were political radicals, although not anarchists, in Jesus’s place and time—the Zealots. Jesus could have endorsed them, or joined them, if that was what he was about.

“Held protests at oppressive temples”? Jesus did not consider the temple in Jerusalem oppressive. His concern was the opposite, to keep it holy. Nor did he “hold a protest.” This suggests an organized political action.

“Advocated for universal health care”? This is invention. Do they get this from the fact that he went around healing people? Do doctors necessarily endorse, let alone advocate, universal health care?

“Advocated for redistribution of wealth.” I suspect they get this from his advice to a rich young man to give all he had to the poor.

But look at the passage. Jesus does not call for redistribution of wealth here. A rich young man comes to him and asks what he must do to enter heaven. And Jesus says, keep the commandments. That’s what is needed to enter heaven. The young man says he already does that. Is there anything more he can do? Then Jesus says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasures in heaven.”

The passage is clear, then, that nobody is under any moral obligation to give their possessions to the poor. This earns extra merit.

Of course, no such merit is earned if the giving is legally required by government. Although we might very well want to do this. Giving to the poor is a moral act. Voting that everyone should give to the poor is not a moral act. It is as likely to be a way to avoid guilt over your own moral choices.

If leftists indeed want to follow Jesus on this, government does not prevent them from giving all they have to charity.

And conservatives as a group give more to charity than leftists do.

Note Matthew 26:

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, 7 woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
8When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9“This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
10Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

A general redistribution of wealth? Hardly a clear mandate for it here.

“Arrested for terrorism”: this is completely fabricated. Jesus was not arrested for terrorism, was not charged with terrorism, was not executed for terrorism, and there is nothing anywhere in the Bible that hints he engaged in terrorism.

Including this in the evidence that Jesus was a left-wingert and not a right-winger, even at the cost of making it up, tells us something important about the left. They are, here, implicitly saying terrorists are on their side. They support terrorism.

This indeed explains why the left has recently found fierce common cause with “Islam,” even though all the values of Islam run directly counter to leftist beliefs, far more than do those of Christianity, which they despise. The key here has to be that they do not support Islam: they support terrorism. They support Islam only to the extent that they think it leads to terrorism.

Really: think about it. They used to support the IRA for the same reason. It was masked as a concern for the rights of Catholics, but seriously: does the left otherwise support Catholics or Catholicism?

Yeah, Jesus would be entirely down with that: destroying things and killing innocent people.

“Executed for crimes against the state.” Technically true, but according to the Bible this was a bogus charge that even the Roman prefect, Pilate, did not believe.

The next image claims that Jesus was “Everything Conservatives hate.”

“Bleeding heart.” The tone of the post is very old-fashioned, and I guess maybe back in the Sixties “bleeding heart” really was a term that was often used. It is not something you see contemporary conservative saying, so it is not evidence, if true, that contemporary conservatives would have disagreed with Jesus in the first place.

But was Jesus a “bleeding heart”? The Urban dictionary gives the top meaning of “bleeding heart” as “Feeling sorry for everything and everyone and giving in to emotions quickly.” If this is the correct definition, Jesus was clearly not one, and to call him such is necessarily a criticism. He did not feel sorrow for the scribes and the Pharisees. He showed himself to be calm, as in the storm on Galilee, or when seized in Gethsemane, when those about him were emotional. Somebody here is simply imagining Jesus to be as they want him to be.

“Long-haired”: Jesus did indeed, in the traditional depiction, wear his hair long. A reasonable argument can be made that he did not do so in imitation of the hippies of the 1960s. More likely, they wore their hair long in imitation of him. Nor is wearing long hair an indication of left-wing politics. Ever watch “Duck Dynasty”? The left can get upset about people wearing corn rolls, but the right could not care less how you wear your hair.

“Peace-loving”: Jesus was peace-loving, as are most of us, but not a pacifist. He said, for example,

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).

Peace a good, but it is not the ultimate value. Nor is it clear, currently, whether the left or the right is more concerned with maintaining the peace. Who, currently, is more inclined to riot? Who is more supportive of the police?

“Anti-establishment”: yes, Jesus was anti-establishment. But let us be clear: what establishment? He said nothing against the civil or political establishment. He said nothing against Roman rule. Jesus refused to condemn publicans or tax collectors. He was opposed to the scribes and Pharisees: the intellectual establishment of his day.

Who is the intellectual establishment of today? Who are the scribes and Pharisees? Most literally, most directly, the media and the academy. Scribes were professional writers, Pharisees were professional teachers. Both groups lean overwhelmingly to the left currently. And are heartily disliked on the right.

“Liberal.” Properly speaking, “liberal” means believing in human rights, civil liberties. Which means, on the whole, small government. I think a good argument can be made that Jesus was indeed liberal in this sense: he carved out a religious sphere independent of the state. But it would be more accurate to say that liberalism is largely founded on his teachings: the equality of man, the separation of church and state. But while Jesus seems plainly liberal, the modern left plainly is not. It is all about big government and group rights.

“Hippie freak”: again, this is a case of the hippies imitating Jesus, not Jesus imitating the hippies. But there is something to this: the hippies were at least in part a spiritual movement, and did appeal to Christian values. Unfortunately, just about everyone sold out except the Jesus Freaks, the Hare Krishnas, and George Harrison. For most of them, the imitation was sadly superficial, and only about appearances and material things. Jesus was not that big on sex, drugs, or rock and roll.

“With strange ideas”: this one is the dead giveaway. Strange to whom? Presumably, to whoever is making the meme.

In other words, they do not actually share Jesus’s views at all. They find them strange.

"Islamophobia" and the Left

Hope and Change?

It’s all starting to make me dizzy. Back before 9/11, I was often getting emails from feminists demanding that the US invade Afghanistan, in defense of women’s rights. I lived for some years in Saudi Arabia, and kept reading articles objecting to the Kingdom’s lack of appreciation for women’s rights. The hijab was oppression by the patriarchy. Yet now, quite suddenly, feminists and the left generally are all in support of Islam. A poster shown prominently during the recent women’s march on Washington showed a woman in a hijab painted as the American flag. The leader of that march, I hear, was Muslim, and the assembled throngs listened to a Muslim call to prayer. Bill Maher has now been banned from speaking at Berkeley because he has publicly criticised Islam. Poor fellow, still bitterly clinging to a few tawdry principles, if misguided, has gotten him caught in the whiplash.

It is all very Orwellian—Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been allied with Eurasia.

The hostility to Islam was always misguided. But one wonders: does the left actually have any principles? What are they? It is just really hard to see any coherent philosophy behind all this. And it is harder to see how anyone with any actual principles could remain allied long with the left.

The left is of course supposed to be all in favour of women’s rights. Yet this is not the first time they seem to have gone directly against this. They loved and love Bill Clinton, whose actions towards women would seem to be criminal had anyone else but Clinton done them. Yet voting Trump instead of Clinton’s wife last election was “misogyny.” Granted, it was Mr. Clinton and not Mrs. who behaved so badly, but she always backed him and defended him against the charges of the claimed victims. The left is adamant about the need to allow men into women’s public toilets at will, a measure that seems very much against the best interests of women and girls. The left is vitriolic in its attacks on any woman identified with the right: Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, Sarah Palin, Betsy DeVos.

The left is of course supposed to be all in favour of black people (“African-Americans” in the US). Yet it was more passionate about opposing Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education than any other Trump cabinet appointment, because she backed charter schools and vouchers. She actually now needs a police escort wherever she goes. The primary beneficiaries of charter schools and vouchers are poor black families.

The left is supposed to be all in favour of the working class. Yet their fierce opposition to enforcing the laws on immigration directly harms the American working class. It drives down and keeps down the price of low-skilled labour.

Trump is supposed to be intolerably anti-gay. Yet he has long supported gay marriage. When he became president, Barack Obama publicly opposed it, as did Hillary Clinton at the time. Yet they are supposed to be heroes to the gay community.

And what about Jews? The left is currently making a big cause celébre about one attendee at Ezra Levant’s recent Toronto rally supposedly making a Nazi salute. Yet Levant himself is Jewish. They insist that Trump and Steve Bannon are “anti-semitic.” Yet Trump’s daughter is a Jewish convert, and Bannon’s Breitbart is consistently pro-Israel. Was Obama? Meanwhile, a McGill student who called on all to physically assault “Zionists” is getting widespread support on the left.

One might almost begin to suspect the left has no principles.

Can the same charge be laid against the right? I don’t think so. True, Trump’s policies do not correspond to some longstanding right-wing views: he is anti-free-trade, and the right has for some time been pro-free-trade. He is sympathetic to Russia, and most on the right have seen Russia as America’s main geopolitical rival.

But this seems to me quite different: it is a case of Trump going against the right-wing mainstream, not the right-wing mainstream changing its views.

So what is left, as a general principle, behind the left wing? I think it has to be laid down to sheer class interest. That class being the professional class. Whatever is best for the professions, is the left-wing position: whatever is good for teachers, college professors, lawyers, doctors, social workers, bureaucrats. Everything else, it seems, is a con job, for those interest groups who can be suckered. Or, put more kindly, these are client groups that the left promises to take care of, in return for keeping them in power.

But the left has no special allegiance to any of these client groups. Whoever will sign on, gets a nose to the trough.