Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Are We Winning the Debate? (Part 1)
(Sorry for the 20-minute run time but I want to offer a complete version. If you want a shorter version you can watch it here.)
For those of you who have no time for a video at the moment, a white guy was casually called a racist by a race-baiter and he absolutely refused to take it. He wasn’t obnoxious or vulgar but he was firm and resolute. I have a flutter of optimism that this is a new trend that will work against the idiocy of identity politics.
.
Published in General
That’s why Jordan’s smack down was so satisfying.
I’m guessing that this quote is from his book: War is a Racket
P.S. that was my final answer.
P.P.S. I did read the book years ago.
I think the most” lack-of-self-awareness” thing that Dyson said was that he was about breaking down barriers. The first thing you need to do to break down barriers is to treat the individual you are interacting with as an individual and not as a representative of a group. How is it “breaking down barriers” to immediately refer to someone’s race when debating him. And as an aside, he brought up being Canadian as an example of belonging to a group, conflating group identity based on ethnicity with national identity. National identity serves to beak down barriers while ethnic identity enhances them.
What a blowhard. His “people” (radical Left) should be embarrassed by him. He might sound intelligent, but his ideas are destructive and hateful. If anyone is mean and hate-filled it is this man. And I’m saddened that he would refer to the comparison of equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes as hackneyed and out-of-date. Where the information has not been squelched, we’ve learned that many blacks were making great progress and had become part of the middle class by the 1960s; LBJ dragged them back into Reconstruction.
Still, I think we are making progress. Maybe it’s two steps forward, one step back. Thanks for this post, Henry.
Reconstruction was actually pretty good in many ways. Freed blacks walked across states to put their families back together. They got married, went to work and started worrying about how to educate their children.
In some ways, the welfare state was more destructive to black-American life than slavery. Lest we think this is merely a recent or American phenomenon, let’s take a look at what Theodore Dalrymple wrote about Kurdish refugees.
It is said that America chokes on gnats but swallows tigers whole. It would seem that many people can resist and overcome incredibly oppression but become corrupted by the insidiousness of the welfare state.
Huh?
SQ, to whom would this “nattering nabob of negativism” [Spiro Agnew via William Safire] sound intelligent, may I inquire?
Himself, for one. He said so multiple times during the debate. Any anyone who is wowed by a rambling human thesaurus.
He orations are full of sesquiadelia and outrage meaning nothing.
If his arguments had anything other than ad hominem and pathos then he could speak plainly.
I miss Olberman’s GQ rants. Epic. LOL
At least Alex Jones is still standing.
Michael Eric Dyson’s wikipedia page is wild. He’s a PhD theology professor that switched to sociology 10 years ago.
I think teaching theology has a hell of a lot more merit than what he’s doing now. Wow.
How does a theology professor and ordained minister turn into such a kook? I think some religions make personality disorders worse, not better. That’s what I think.
@katebraestrup‘s recent tangles with ‘reformers’ in her denomination (UU) are instructive in this regard…
I need to look that up. Some of those churches are turning totally progressive to try to get members. United Church of Christ is notorious. They send out the wildest emails.
To be clear, my dad has narcissistic personality disorder, and I think my moms’s mom had it. So I’ve got some personal axes to grind on this stuff.
I don’t know that it was a smackdown. Seemed more like Peterson was treating him like a person and expecting a certain level of peer engagement to go with being a person.
Dyson seems more interested in being a victim. He states over and over that his position, or at least the position he represents, is diminished and that leaves only one route for him to be persuasive. You can only engage with him on an acceptable level if you agree to his demand. Peterson doesn’t follow the prescribed rule.
Religions that affirm humanity or humanity’s politics tend to make things worse. Religions that tell us that our nature is a thing to struggle with make us better.