The sound of no hands clapping 115

Welfare state socialism is justified by its enthusiasts on the grounds that there are some people in every nation who cannot support themselves and have no one to support them, so the state must do it; the entire economy of the nation must be brought under government direction and control.

To ask how many such people there are (nowhere more than thousands among tens of millions) is deemed inadmissible because morally wrong. Why morally wrong? For the same reason that state aid must be given to everyone alike, rich and poor, self-reliant and dependent: because the poor and dependent must not be made to feel different from everyone else. They must be saved not only from indigence but also from humiliation. Therefore the rich must receive social security payments from the state just as the poor do.

Whether or not the poor and dependent actually would be sensitive on that score is not the concern of the Good who decree the welfare. The redistribution of wealth – forcibly taking money from those who earn it to give to others who don’t – has to bring about social equality. So even though it would cost much less to give aid directly to the needy  – cutting out the immense cost of welfare administration – and to let the rest accumulate as much wealth as they can –  thus making generosity to the poor easy – the welfare solution is chosen.

It is chosen because it the virtuous choice. It is the virtuous choice because it both raises the poor and brings the rich down.

It is a Christian idea that those who have are bad and must be abased, and those who have not are good and must be rewarded. In Socialism the idea not only persists, it grows ever more malignant.

If there is not yet a moral requirement that those who can walk must lose their legs because not everyone can walk, and those that can speak must lose their tongues because not everyone can speak, it is coming close.

Universities are carrying the idea in that direction.

Listen to what Breitbart reports here and here and here:

1.Those who are white must be punished because not everyone can be white and to be white is a privilege which must be ended.

A prestigious Scottish university arranged an event titled “Resisting Whiteness” where white people were to be banned from speaking.

Resisting Whiteness, which bills itself as a QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Colour) outfit …  also planned to set up two so-called “safe spaces” at the University of Edinburgh event — and intended to ban white people from one of them.

We will not be giving the microphone to white people during the Q&As, not because we don’t think white people have anything to offer to the discussion, but because we want to amplify the voices of people of colour,” explained a primer for the event. “If you are a white person with a question, please share it with a member of the committee or our speakers after the panel discussion.”

2.The way we write must be changed because not everyone can master the way we write.

Leeds Trinity University in the United Kingdom has told its lecturers to avoid using capital letters in their classroom handouts because they upset students, and can “scare students into failure.”

3.The way we show our approval must be changed because some don’t like it.

At Oxford University –

The motion to “mandate the encouragement of silent clapping” proposed using the more “inclusive” British Sign Language symbol for clapping — known as “silent jazz hands” (waving both hands by the sides of the body at about shoulder height) — in place of audible applause.

The clapping ban would affect student union meetings and events where traditional clapping and cheering “presents an access issue” to those with anxiety disorders.

The majority in Scotland, England, Europe and North America are guilty of “cultural racism”, “ablist racism”, and the ineluctable “racism” of just being white.

All you can do, ye guilty, is demean and impoverish yourselves in accordance with Christian values.

Here they are according to St. Paul:

We are the filth of the world, the scum, the muck that is scoured from things (1 Cor 4:13) and the lowest of the low (Phili 2:3).

Let us abase ourselves; be fools (1 Cor 4:10); be humble, and associate with the lowly (Rom 12:16).

Bear affliction with patience (Rom 12:12-14) and even with joy (1 Thess 5:16,18).

You must consider all others to be greater than yourselves (Phili 2:3).

Share all you have so that you’ll all be equal in worldly possessions (2 Cor 8:14, Rom 12:13).

It will not be the first time that groundless shame and guilt have brought a civilization to self-destruction.

 

(Hat-tip to Cogito for the three links)

Posted under Christianity, Socialism by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, October 30, 2019

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Political dhimmis of the West 182

The West has learnt the word “dhimmi since Islam started to succeed (in the 1970s) with its old plan to overwhelm and rule it. A dhimmi is a non-Muslim living under Muslim rule; one who has opted to pay protection money to the overlords in exchange for being allowed to live; one who has submitted to Islam without converting to it.

Which is to say – submitted to an inferior culture, law, and ideology.

But the word could be used more widely. It could usefully be applied to the many weak intellectuals, academics, postmodernists, deconstructionists, feminists … to all who have submitted to the inferior culture, values, ideology of the Left.

They are easy to spot. Their speech is a chant. They chant mantras of the Left.

ReBecca Roloff

Here is an example, so pure it could be used as a perfect model by all “politically correct” dhimmis. It was written by ReBecca [sic] Roloff,  president of St. Catherine University, a Catholic school in St. Paul, Minnesota, to explain why an annual leadership conference was cancelled for 2018. The organizers had suddenly realized that the invited speakers – leaders in industry and commerce – were almost all white people. The Left does not approve of people being hired, appointed to leadership positions, or invited to speak at universities, because of their their merit and achievement. The Left wants people to get jobs and honors on a quota system, to be hired and appointed for – above all else – their color and race. No whites allowed – or as few as may be absolutely necessary, and those few guaranteed to be deeply ashamed of themselves for being white. Ditto if they are male, because “gender” matters next after race. Third, they should not be patriots, Christians, Israelis/Jews, and decidedly not conservatives of any race or “gender”. Fourth, they should not be middle-class  – or even persons of [proven] “ability”! 

In a time where sexism and racism, in their individual and institutional forms, are recognized and called out, those of us in positions of power and privilege – be it through whiteness, maleness, middle-class position, heterosexual-normativity, ability, or Christianity – must slow down, reflect, and listen to those who have been subject to systematic silencing, exploitation, marginalization, and exclusion.

Leftists do not look out of the same window as conservatives. Theirs opens on to a different landscape. They see different causes for political action and judge them according to a different set of values. Their discourse is conducted in different words, a vocabulary out of their own slim political lexicon. The most important word is “diversity“, which means the hiring, appointing, inviting, and listening to only non-white, non-male, non-“heteronormative”, non-middle-class persons who are all of the same political opinion. They see a mirage of President Trump “colluding” with Vladimir Putin.

They do not see what we conservatives see through our window: the need to strengthen the economy by lowering taxes and lifting regulations; to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the US; to deport illegal aliens who are dangerous criminals; to heal the government agencies that were infected with Clintonitis under the Obama administration. They do not see the Islamic invasion of Europe, the constant threat of terrorism there and in the US by Muslims affiliated with al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Iran, Qatar …. They are not concerned about Iran becoming a nuclear power, or North Korea dropping a nuke on Guam. They do not discuss the war in the Middle East. They refuse to notice the outcome of socialist policies imposed in Venezuela where people are now starving.

They attack the Constitution. They want to change the First Amendment so they can stop the expression of all ideas they don’t want to hear. They want to change the Second Amendment so they can stop citizens owning guns.

Institutions could be labeled dhimmis too. Most of the top universities are earning it.

Here’s James Delingpole commenting on Oxford University’s decision that from now on 40% of recommended authors on philosophy reading lists must be women. (How the heck did it arrive at that number?)

How many feminists does it take to ruin a philosophy course?

Oxford University will be letting you know shortly, once it has got the results of its latest politically correct academic experiment.

From now on, Oxford’s philosophy faculty has decreed, 40 percent of the recommended authors on its departmental reading lists must be female.

Also, academic staff have been asked to use philosophers’ first names rather than their initials when compiling reading lists, to make it clearer to undergraduates which ones are female.

This is great news for Barbara Socrates, Mandy Aristotle, Seraphina Wittgenstein, Nancy Descartes, Fifi Trixibelle Locke, Suzi Nietzsche, Bobbi Confucius, Ermintrude Plato, and Petronella Hume, to name but a few of the awesome female philosophical intellects who have been cruelly neglected by history because sexism, misogyny, and the oppressive phallocentric hegemony. …

How then is this new gender quota going to improve standards on the philosophy course at Oxford – formerly (till it became irredeemably SJW converged) one of the world’s better universities?

Short answer: it won’t.

As with artists, composers, writers, musicians, and pretty much every creative or intellectual endeavour you can name, so it is with philosophers: the vast majority of the really great ones were men and the vast majority – for obvious reasons which need not detain us here – always will be men, regardless of how many female contenders get overpromoted thanks to the current fad for enforced gender justice.

So by encouraging students to break down their reading lists according to this ridiculous, politically correct 60:40 gender quota, all the philosophy faculty is doing is promoting dross at the expense of bullion.

Graduates of the philosophy course at Oxford will no longer plausibly be able to claim that they have been properly grounded in the canon because, inevitably, there will be gaps in their knowledge created by the time they’ve wasted on Germaine Greer when they could have been reading someone proper.

This is where Oxford is going unfortunately. And also where Cambridge is going, where Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are going, where most of our great seats of learning are going, in fact.

The twin curses of postmodernism and cultural Marxism have so corrupted academe that even the best universities now prize social justice more highly than intellectual excellence – and aren’t even embarrassed to boast about it. They actually think that gender quotas are a sign of progress.

But do they actually think?