Tag: social justice

‘Liberty and Justice for All?’

 

“Social justice” is a phrase individuals and institutions throw around without definition. But students in my classes can’t get away with such a lazy approach. If a student writes a paper using the phrase “social justice,” I will always, somewhere in my comments, ask two questions:

“What is your ‘social’?” and “What is your standard for ‘justice’?”

Here is an example. A student wrote a declarative comment in his paper,

This week on Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi talks with Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary magazine, about his recently released book, The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War On Fun, examining how the attempt to remoralize American culture mirrors similar social movements in the past and what concerned onlookers can do to better manage this frenzied phenomenon.

Guest:

On this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Dr. Sally Satel, a practicing psychiatrist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss her article “When Therapists Become Activists” and explain how the radical social justice agenda is infiltrating mental health care.

Member Post

 

Dartmouth College, like any higher education institution, sends out all the usual periodic emails from administration officials, various academic departments, and the medical staff’s COVID-19 updates. To give you all an idea of the current intellectual climate and political views of the administration and selected members of the faculty, I’ve excerpted parts of some of […]

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Calling Things by Their Actual Names

 

In his memoir Fear No Evil, Natan Sharansky recounts his experience at the hands of the Soviet KGB during his years as a refusenik . A favorite tactic of the KGB was to torture prisoners with the intent of getting them to confess to false charges which could be used to justify their imprisonment. In a gripping account of one particularly brutal torture session, Sharansky describes how he was on the verge of breaking down and giving a false confession, when the memory of those who had come before him and refused to lie about themselves suddenly came to his mind. He remembered how his knowledge of the gritty refusal of others to speak untruths had enabled him, up until that moment, to stand up to his own tormentors. The realization came crashing down upon him that if he broke by giving a false confession, he might be doing great damage to those who came after him by failing to provide for them the same example that others had provided for him. That memory, in that terrible moment, was an ultimate game changer for Sharansky — he never did go on to bear witness to a lie.

It turns out that a commitment to the truth can yield surprising downstream effects.

Quote of the Day: Sowing Doubt and Division

 

“With each of the issues highlighted in this book the aim of the social justice campaigners has consistently been to take each one – gay, women, race, trans – that they can present as a rights grievance and make their case at its most inflammatory. Their desire is not to heal but to divide, not to placate but to inflame, not to dampen but to burn. In this again the last part of a Marxist substructure can be glimpsed. If you cannot rule a society – or pretend to rule it, or try to rule it and collapse everything – then you can do something else. In a society that is alive to its faults, and though imperfect remains a better option than anything else on offer, you sow doubt, division, animosity and fear. Most effectively you can try to make people doubt absolutely everything. Make them doubt whether the society they live in is good at all. Make them doubt that people really are treated fairly. Make them doubt whether there are any such groupings as men or women. Make them doubt almost everything. And then present yourself as having the answers: the grand, overarching, interlocking set of answers that will bring everyone to some perfect place, the details of which will follow in the post.”

– Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds (pp. 281-282). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

An Open Letter to the Woke Left

 

To my “woke” fellow Americans:

As a forty-something conservative woman, I think you are leading the country to disaster with your rigid codes of conduct, your rejection of the US and its values, and the divisions you inflame among American citizens. Why should you listen to me? For what it’s worth, I have a perspective broadened by living overseas. I’ve witnessed the contrasts in living conditions between the US and other parts of the world. I know something of the gulf in worldviews that results, outside the West, in truly culturally acceptable favoritism and inequality.

Member Post

 

I have seen only one survey on the topic, but the increasing politicization of professional sports is apparently turning off a lot of fans. Players with multi-million dollar contracts are using their sports platforms to advance “social justice” agendas.   That survey, conducted in 2018 by pollster and friend John McLaughlin for the Media Research […]

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45 Goals of Communism?

 

I recently heard of a former FBI agent named Cleon Skousen who wrote a book called, “Naked Communism”, in 1958. He laid out the goals of communism that were eventually added into the Congressional Records on Jan. 10th, 1963 (appendix A34 – A35).  Interestingly, quite a few of those goals seem to be in today’s news and events.  See how many you can check off:

  1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
  2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
  3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
  4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
  5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
  6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
  7. Grant recognition to Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
  8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
  9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
  10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
  11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
  12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
  13. Do away with loyalty oaths.
  14. Continue giving Russia access to U.S. Patent Office.
  15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
  16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
  17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
  18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
  19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
  20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
  21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
  22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. (An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”)
  23. Control art critics and directors of art museums.
  24. Eliminate all laws of obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
  25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
  26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
  27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
  28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
  29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
  30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
  31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
  32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
  33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
  34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
  35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
  36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
  37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
  38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
  39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
  40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.
  41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
  42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
  43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
  44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
  45. Repeal the “Connally Reservation” so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

Pride

 

Pride

Often, in our day, the word, “pride,” is used in various ways as a noun or a verb. One way the word has been used today is a “confidence and self-respect as expressed by members of a group, typically one that has been socially marginalized, on the basis of their shared identity, culture, and experience.”

Online Dating: Social Justice Warriors and Frozen Snowflakes

 

This seems like something that could be added to the conversation on social justice warriors. While browsing Hinge this evening, I came across this profile which took me aback, something that rarely happens anymore. This person’s response to a prompt about “what social cause I care about” was by far the craziest I’ve ever read on one of these sites. There is a theory that some people say far-fetched things to impress other people especially in blue cities like Chicago, but the sheer madness and breadth of what he invented here makes me think he was actually being quite concrete. Here’s his answer:

“Disabling the white, ableist, cis-hetero patriarchy by destroying capitalism, firing all cops, and guillotining the rich.”

Social Justice?

 

For evidence of the social justice movement’s moral bankruptcy, look no further than its own language.

All it sees are causes for complaint. All it offers is etiquette for protests. Take orders from people of colorAcknowledge your privilegeCall out implicit bias! Its vision of a just society, insofar as it has one, is hazy and surreal, like the Christian vision of heaven or the world after Christ’s return. It lacks a goal; it has no endgame beyond uniting all people in mutual hatred of systemic oppression.

Member Post

 

Being interested in architectural design, I came across this topic (shared by a fellow traveller) and found it very artistically beautiful (and even mores in nighttime photos). https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/mansion-violin-shaped-pool/ However, (depending on your news source) when comments were allowed, they inevitably had those who roughly stated how horrible it was to spend on such a thing […]

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Who’s the Joker Now?

 

For many, the attacks on the Joker movie coming from media outlets like CNN and the New York Times are mystifying. But it is actually easy to understand once you see the movie and sleep on it.

Joker – a horrible yet great movie – is premised on an underlying tale of disregard for a humane interpretation of the values of empathy and social justice.

But the SJW Left can’t handle it because the vehicle for the morality play is a hated “other” — an isolated white male who cracks violently — and also a hated reality check that there is no redemption or return from certain forms of mental illness once a point of no return is passed.

A Bumper Sticker I’d Like to See

 

Remember in the ’80s those bumper stickers that said, “The Moral Majority Is Neither”? Well, I think it’s our turn now. I’d like to have a bumper sticker that reads, “Social Justice Is Neither.” It is definitely anti-social with its cancel culture, and it certainly isn’t just. For all I know, there may already be someone selling them.

Ray Domanico joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza’s controversial and divisive leadership of the nation’s largest public school system. Domanico details Carranza’s emphasis on ridding schools of purported racial bias in his recent essay for City Journal, “Richard Carranza’s Deflections.”

Over the past four decades, with varying levels of success, Carranza’s predecessors in the chancellor’s job have launched numerous policies and programs aimed at better serving students. By contrast, Carranza has put forth no substantive plan for improving the schools, instead charging that the system is overrun by racial prejudice.

James R. Copland joins Rafael Mangual to discuss how activist investors are turning corporate America’s annual shareholder-meeting process into a political circus.

Most of corporate America is wrapping up the 2019 “proxy season” this month—the period when most publicly traded companies hold their annual meetings. It’s at these gatherings that shareholders can (either directly or by proxy) propose and vote on changes to the company. Since 2011, the Manhattan Institute has tracked these proposals on its Proxy Monitor website. This year’s proxy season has followed a long-term trend: a small group of investors dominates the proceedings, introducing dozens of progressive-inspired proposals on issues ranging from climate change to diversity.

Quote of the Day: Rewriting History

 

“If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we will find that we have lost the future.” – Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

Kate Smith’s statue gets covered over because of a song she sang 80 years ago. Dowling Street in Houston, named for a Confederate hero, gets renamed Emancipation. A set of paintings of George Washington are painted over because he was a slaveholder. These are just a few instances of history being erased, rewritten, or removed from the public view because standards have changed.