Recommended by R> Members “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” – Ben Shapiro
The reaction to the release of the Muller Report reminded me of this quote. There seem to be a large number of people whose feelings conflict with the facts presented. As a result, many have rejected the facts in favor of their feelings.
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Recommended by R> Members Ralph Stanley and his brother Carter were born in rural Virginia in the late 1920s. They lived through the Depression, but it didn’t affect them much since they lived on a high ridge, where their parents grew much of their own food, and their mother made their clothes. Ralph says in his memoir Man of Constant Sorrow:
MoreThe worst of it was over by the time I was old enough to remember much. Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, when I was five and already in school. So we had the Works Progress Administration and other government welfare programs coming in to help people out. Our family was never involved in that, either with the work or the welfare. We didn’t pay much attention to what they was doing or what they was all about. We’d see the WPA crews by the roadside, leaning on their shovels and smoking cigarettes. They always looked to be taking breaks and goofing off. We was more used to hard work, and we thought they was soft and lazy. We had our own name for them: the “We Piddle Around” boys.
Recommended by R> Members Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. – Robert F. Kennedy
Yes, the man who said this is Bobby Kennedy, a man disliked by the right and who should be distrusted by the left. (Robert Kennedy worked for Joe McCarthy and at the time apparently liked the work.) But when someone is right about something, pay attention, perhaps especially if you dislike the person.
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Recommended by R> Members Screwtape: Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking “Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?” they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make.
Screwtape (a fictional character from C.S. Lewis) is a devil, a demon, a minion of Satan, a deceiver and tempter of men. Here he’s giving some advice to a younger devil on how to deceive. The devils want us to ignore genuine reason and commit fallacies. Like ad populum fallacies–appealing to the preference of a majority when the majority lacks knowledge.
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Recommended by R> Members “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. People with careers as ethnic leaders usually tell their followers what they want to hear.” – Thomas Sowell
I thought of this quote watching Democrats pandering to minority groups as they run for President. It seems the campaign is based on who can promise the most to certain ethnic groups — reparations, unlimited entrance to this country, immunity from prosecution based on race and sexual orientation. Promise sufficient goodies to enough different minorities and you have just over the 50 percent you need to get elected.
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Recommended by R> Members Last week, in his Wall Street Journal “Best of the Web” newsletter, James Freeman discussed Elizabeth Warren’s call for a “thorough national conversation on Reparations.” Here is what he said:
MoreThe basic idea is that the federal government will apportion among the citizens living now the historical guilt for heinous acts committed by people long dead against other people long dead. Then money would flow from people who have not been convicted of any crime to people who have not been found by any court to have been victimized by a crime.
Recommended by R> Members In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. – Theodore Dalrymple
You can replace the word communist with progressive and it explains a lot of the ridiculousness being spouted today: gender fluidity, the patriarchy, the joys of socialism. Whatever the current cause de jour for the woke folk, it has to be ridiculous on its face, yet asserted with total sincerity. It is not enough to have you state the ridiculous is true. You must believe what you state. Otherwise they will devour you the way the demons devoured Wormwood at the end of the Screwtape Letters.
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“There are two kinds of statistics: those you look up and those you make up.” — Nero Wolfe, Death of a Doxy Statistics or anecdote? Which pulls more weight with you? If there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, how do you trust them? Is knowledge power (Bacon), or power knowledge (Lyotard)? For me, when the […]
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Recommended by R> Members “When facts become secondary to emotion, truth dies. And a society that doesn’t value truth cannot survive.” – Ben Shapiro It does not seem to matter what the crisis de jour, political flashpoint, or cultural conflict is — immigration, education, terrorism, gun rights, vote fraud, whatever. It always seems to center on appeal to emotions, […]
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Last month, Ray and I attended a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in California. As is usual for these events, one of the speakers was Dr. Larry Arnn, the President of the College. More
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Recommended by R> Members The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight! – Ludwig von Mises
The only change I would make to this statement is to substitute the DMV for the post office. The post office (usually) delivers your mail without having to make you stand in line for hours, even when it does come late. Other than that, von Mises nails it, and I do not see how I can add more.
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Recommended by R> Members It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat. – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)
The blogfather is obviously talking about the solution always offered by socialists, statists, and authoritarians of every stripe, rather than his own beliefs.
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Recommended by R> Members It is amazing how many people think that the government’s role is to give them what they want by overriding what other people want. – Thomas Sowell
More Sowell food for thought.
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Recommended by R> Members “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.” – Ronald Reagan
The problem with socialism is it requires perfect people to work. That is why it works in heaven. Of course, if people are perfect, as Reagan observed, socialism is unnecessary. And if people are not perfect in a place where socialism is implemented? Well, Reagan had the answer to that, as well. Perhaps it is no accident that the United States’s most flawed politicians are the most ardent socialists in the United States.
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I usually try to make my QOTD submission something serious, but the is an exception. My wife and I are pretty much fed up with most current TV programs and movies these days and have been enjoying some older choices from either our “stash” or the local library. Some of these are more serious […]
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Recommended by R> Members This is egg salad. It’s loaded with cholesterol, the wife won’t even let me touch it. It hardly seems to matter now, ’cause chances are, we’re already dead. [Captain] Amazing is gone, there’s no use waiting for the cavalry because, at this moment, the cavalry is us. This is our fight, whether we like it […]
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Recommended by R> Members “It would be hard to think of a more ridiculous way to make decisions than to transfer those decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong. Yet that is what at least half of the bright ideas of the political left amount to.” – Thomas Sowell
Although Thomas Sowell wrote this years (perhaps decades) ago, it is more relevant today than when he wrote it. We have had our noses rubbed in the consequences of transferring important decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong for nearly ten years — certainly since January 2009 when the American people inaugurated a government for experts, of experts, and by experts. Since then, they have made dozens of faulty decisions, for which others paid the price of the “experts” being wrong. The third-party deciders suffer no consequences except occasionally being promoted.
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Recommended by R> Members It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic. – Thomas Sowell More Sowell food. Somehow this […]
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Recommended by R> Members The spirit of the kangaroo court has since graduated into business and politics where it has proven especially useful for settling scores and advancing careers and agendas dishonestly. Coercion has replaced persuasion. Coercion is at the heart of totalitarian politics. Do what you’re told, or else. Believe what we say, or else. (Or else lose your reputation, your livelihood, your friends….) This plays neatly into the dynamics of human mob psychology. When the totalitarians set up for business, few individuals dare to depart from the party line. It’s the perfect medium for cultivating mendacious ideologies. – James H. Kunstler
The “Resistance” is big on projecting the label of “Fascist” on their opponents. They even call their movement “antifa” for anti-fascist. It reminds me of how another other totalitarian society truncated Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)to Gestapo. Intolerant bigotry against all of those disagreeing even slightly with your views has always been the hallmark of the fascist. And today, it is not only the political mob that will come after you. Major corporations are firing, deplatforming, refusing to service and otherwise silencing those who deviate from the Progressive agenda; intolerance in the name of diversity.
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When @vectorman reminded me a month or so ago that I was late in uploading my QoTD, I replied that I had had it ready, but it was late since I “had problems with the draft” (i.e. it disappeared). It occured to me later that the phrase “trouble with the draft” used to have a […]
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