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Only the GOP Can Stop the Left’s Radical Agenda
What we are seeing around the nation today is the opportunistic exploitation, by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, of a specific tragedy in order to push a radical agenda. The specific tragedy is an act of criminal police misconduct (alleged, but almost universally assumed, and for good reason) that led to the death of George Floyd. The radical agenda includes calls for an end to capitalism, an end to policing, an end to incarceration, and various other similarly preposterous “woke” nostrums.
What makes this situation unusual is the efficiency with which these radical organizations have leveraged a single outrage into a semi-coordinated national campaign. What makes this situation depressing and somewhat terrifying is the degree to which otherwise sensible-seeming people have rushed to embrace the self-destructive idiocy of these radical movements.
It is hard to look at the nation and not conclude that we are in a precarious place from which a return to normalcy is essential but by no means assured. We’ve experienced similar social convulsions before, most recently in the late 1960s. We survived that in part because the electorate chose to reject the more radical path in favor of what was perceived as a conservative administration. This prevented at least the worst of the progressive agenda from gaining a foothold in law.
If Democrats win the White House and both houses of the Congress in November, it is entirely believable that they will enact portions of the radical agenda that is currently animating the left and capturing surprising popular support. This would include novel assaults on the free market and law enforcement, as well as a renewed emphasis on gender identity radicalism. In the current climate it could also include steps toward imposing reparations for past racism, a national guaranteed minimum income, nationally mandated voting reforms that make elections wildly unreliable, and further regulation of health care. All of these are things that would flow naturally from the current virus and race relations crises.
What stands in the way of that? Realistically, only one thing: control of the House, the Senate, or the executive branch by the Republican Party. In this extremely volatile and deeply irrational moment — which blue state governors may yet be able to prolong for several months through misuse of their currently exaggerated powers — it is essential that the unchecked ability to implement federal law not be handed over to a Democratic Party unwilling or unable to resist its most radical factions.
I think the Republican Party, as imperfect and often frustrating as it is, is the bulwark, the wall, between the civil society we still enjoy and a swelling tide of increasingly unhinged radicalism. We must hold on to something, anything, in November.
Published in Elections
I actually didn’t know that Max was an editor, so I’m running behind here.
I have no ownership interest other than in my post at #3, which is now rendered even more nonsensical than my other efforts.
I don’t know if Max is an editor, Hoy. His title says “admin,” but I think he’s more than that.
I think Max is a wheel.
That’s why I try not to be rude to him.
Good to know I’m not going crazy, as I was sure I didn’t read a post with GOP in the title recently.
“If Democrats win the White House and both houses of the Congress in November, it is entirely believable that they will enact portions of the radical agenda that is currently animating the left and capturing surprising popular support”
Yes. Free expression is *already* under serious assault, enabled by the “progressive” capture of most of the media, almost all of academia, and substantial portions of the business leadership. Imagine what it would be like were they to control the machinery of the Federal Government, as well. The destruction could easily be irreversible.
Facebook posts referring to Republicans, and especially Trump supporters, increasingly seem to label them as ‘criminals’, though without specifying what law they have purportedly broken. And a criminal, of course, is someone who should be put in prison and/or financially punished.
Don’t think they won’t do it if they get the power, and don’t think you are safe just because you dislike Trump and agree with many portions of the Prog agenda.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
We can’t rule out the possibility that you’re going crazy. Just saying.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
Never-Trumpers need to think very seriously about what is really at stake here.
I’m not sure they’re capable of thinking very seriously about anything. At least I haven’t seen evidence of it so far.
They used to be, Jonah and that lot. That’s what’s strange to us liberals–“conservatives”, or, “Americans according to fundamental beliefs, as opposed to tribal heritage” if you prefer.
(For me, there is nothing at all strange about Americans in general being incapable of thinking seriously about anything, and being nonetheless convinced that they are. In other words, they are in general badly educated.)
I liked the play on words.
I’m not so sure. Remember, most people have an IQ of 100 or less, by definition. And I think it takes a fair amount more than 100 to do much serious thinking. Which means that, also by definition, most people are incapable of it.
Feel free to do so, however realize that I am willing to engage in the battle, so there won’t be any unanswered attacks. For better or worse, I am a counter-puncher.
Max, I had a hard time finding this post because you changed the title!
Do NOT mess with Max, who keeps the trains running on time. Many a time when the site crashes, I email Max and he fixes the problem immediately. I disagree with Max on policy issues, but I respect that he keeps things going, which is huge.
No, half the people have an IQ of less than 100.
Please document your claim.
I have reflected at length on this issue, and have come to a contrary conclusion. The election is in 142 days.
I think what baffles many, including yours truly, is how one can weigh the situation accurately, and come out in support of Joe Biden.
You’ve made it quite clear that your objections to Trump are essentially on “moral” or even “stylistic” grounds. There are lots of people who have similar objections. But, as I see it, those objections simply pale next to the concrete issues of governance that will take hold if Biden becomes President. Those issues are the mountain. Next to them, objections to Trump’s character are the molehill.
Well, for starters, please see my post The United States of Weimar?, which links numerous stories of Leftist violence and intimidation over the years. This was a 2016 post. You can also easily find numerous cases of people being ‘cancelled’ for non-approved views, especially in media and academia. See for example the current cases of economics professor Uhlig and law professor Jacobson, whose jobs are under attack because of their political opinions. Also Lynchings and Witch-Trials, Technology-Enhanced.
Seems very clear to me that today’s ‘progressive’ Left is all about thought control.
This seems like an understatement. America has had (so I have minimally read) periods of pronounced societal lawlessness. And there have been I believe two Great Awakenings that followed these periods. With the exclusion of the Bible from public display and consideration along with its tacit approval, people have no idea of another way. And with America’s great post-war prosperity, including free-everything entitlements, people don’t even see, and apparently aren’t aware of, the Tenth Commandment. And so looting is poorly checked. Reparations are condoned. And charity is replaced with taxation and redistribution.
Actually no. Your statement “half the people have an IQ of less than 100” is incorrect because that could only be true if nobody has an IQ OF 100. But of course many do, in fact that’s the one point where the MOST people have that number. I said “OF 100 OR LESS.” 100 is the center point, so at 100 or below, inclusive, would be more than half.
I really don’t think anyone is worried about your counter-punches. Sorry but that’s just how it is.
And that, right there, is the evidence that you did not actually think about it very seriously.
And the election results will be in 159 days, once the democrats have found extra ballots sitting around to adjust and fix things.
You are not disagreeing with me. I believe that having insufficient native ability is one common sufficient condition of a lack of education. We don’t know how much native ability it takes though. When a group of people move to America and live here for one generation, their IQs increase significantly. So how much of IQ is really native? Not all, for sure.
And to what extent is it true that after 16 years of institutional attendance, the cause of a complete lack of critical thinking ability, which I think may be the norm, is due to the active interference with learning to think, by bad teachers? To a considerable extent, I speculate.
Also, because of social pressure, it is suddenly the case in America since WWII at least, to have a great desire to appear to be educated (university-level educated), and told that one is educated, and believe that one is educated. But how many people want to be educated? A common phrase used by Americans to describe their schooling is “I wasn’t interested in school. I asked, ‘why do I need to learn this?'”
A person who asks “why do I need to learn this?”, who finds classes boring, is a person who has no desire to be educated. He lacks intellectual curiosity, which is not a bad thing, but a normal thing, like lacking the desire to hear classical music, or go to war, or climb mountains.
Best response ever to this question: a math prof was asked, ‘But professor, how to you USE this?”
Professor: “You use it to make the atomic bomb!”
Student: “HOW do you use it to make the atomic bomb?”
Professor: “That’s classified!”
Here are some of the people who have lost their jobs lately following accusations of ‘racism’, or ‘insensitivity’:
List
Note that all it takes is an accusation…”Goody Thompson was seen talking to Sarah Williams, and we all know that the Williams woman has attempted to summon the devil.”
If you want to live this way, be sure to vote the straight Democratic ticket.
Sixty percent of the population has an IQ of 85 to 115 which is considered to be the average range. IQ scores are officially reported as ranges, due to the variability of testing conditions at any particular time. For example, you may score an overall 96 today, and a 103 the next time you take the test (which should be at least two years from the first time) and would be considered within the range of a standard error of measurement. As far as serious thinking, most people, when taught, can distinguish right from wrong, and think critically about many subjects. With a lower IQ, subjects need to be less complex, but critical decisions could be made. A person with a higher IQ could think more seriously about complex subjects and take more viewpoints into consideration. Although the public schools keep telling you they are teaching critical thinking, it is nothing of the sort. They are indoctrinating students with progressive ideas and teaching them to be critical of anyone who does not think like them.
As William F. Buckley famously observed, the correlation between good governance and intelligence and/or education is tenuous. At best.
http://ricochet.com/240235/archives/what-is-critical-thinking/
But that’s old. Maybe we need a new thread on critical thinking.
Between a person with critical thinking skills and one without, there are striking qualitative behavioral differences, not just positions on a continuous quantitative spectrum of problem-solving ability.
Old’s fine. But if we have a new thread, let it be one of lexicographic research:
Or,
Then we will have stated a meaningful question before seeking to answer it. If I may be critical, that is a critical critical thinking skill that wasn’t apparent in the first thread. As a result the old thread went critical and blew up.
If there are any meaningful meanings of the interrogative sentence, “What is critical thinking?” other than this kind of sociological fieldwork, let’s hear them. But you won’t find any, I’m afraid. A definition is arbitrarily manufactured, to serve the purpose of pointing to an idea. One can’t discover a definition through dialogue, which is what the old post tried to do. A category-noun definition is an assertion of the form, “a thing is an instance of X if and only if these things are true…” Once accepted in a dialog it is apodictically true.