At Socialist World, Ramy Khalil argues that women have the absolute right to choose to have an abortion because evil capitalism and patriarchal society is going to stick her with the kid.
The right to abortion is especially necessary in a society that ultimately expects women to bear the financial and emotional responsibilities of raising children, but pays women much lower wages than men. The decision to carry a pregnancy to term must be the woman’s and no one else’s – not the church’s, government’s, parents’, husband’s, or boyfriend’s.
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So why is it a problem when women from ‘minority’ cultures choose to have an abortion performed because they don’t want girls? “In the third world, unwanted baby girls ‘disappear’. It’s called gendercide. And it’s happening in this country, too.”
According to Real Choices, a website which specializes in counseling women over unwanted pregnancies, abortions should be available, prior to the viability of a fetus for any reason.
Under the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, abortions may be performed for any reason (socioeconomic, failure of birth control, personal choice) prior to viability (about 24 weeks of pregnancy) and for any reason relating to the mother’s physical or psychological health thereafter. In these cases (post-viability abortions), the term “health” has been defined very broadly by the court to include any matter that might affect a woman’s “sense of well-being.”
Leaving aside the question of whether abortions are moral or not, or whether “gendericide” is moral or not, or what the law says, why is: gendericide > abortion rights? When does one set of PC rules trump another? Since both gender and amniocentesis tests can be performed before the 20th week, there is no reason, apart from holding one PC value higher than the other, why any political objection should be interposed.
Ordering the hierarchy of PC values is insoluble because all its values, whether they be the cost of an item, the worth of a life or the value of an education, are defined entirely by some ill-defined human consensus. Take a university degree for example. The Liberal Democratic Party of the UK have used their position in the ruling coalition government to appoint an academic called Les Ebdon to a position of supervision over all universities. Ebdon’s stated goal is to make all university degrees equivalent to each other.
He is vehemently against the ‘Oxbridge Obsession’, never mind the acknowledged excellence of other top-level universities.
Most controversially, he is in favour of social engineering, threatening ‘nuclear’ retribution against universities that don’t increase their intake of students from less well-off backgrounds …
It was under Tony Blair that Labour first introduced its so-called ‘flagship’ education policy of aiming to send half of all school-leavers to university — leading to widespread fears about the lowering of university standards and devalued degrees.
Sound familiar?
he will have huge powers over elite universities — able to slash their tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 a year if they fail to meet targets to take on more students from poor families. He says, rather melodramatically, that he will be an ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ …
The Cambridge-Oxford-London ‘Golden Triangle’ group of universities is in his firing line. Why should these establishments receive more money for research than lesser institutions, he asks? Isn’t that elitism? Just because they are better, should they get more money?…
‘It’s a snobs’ table,’ he said. ‘Institutions like Cambridge and Oxford are always at the front, while newer places bring up the rear.’…
The courses on offer at his institution do not include traditional degree courses such as maths, physics, chemistry, history or modern languages.
Instead, there is a less-than-scholastic two-year course in carnival arts — teaching undergraduates how to design costumes and allowing them ‘to take part in Europe’s largest one-day carnival: the Luton International Carnival’.
Then there is the degree in advertising, and in beauty spa management. Work experience ‘is gained from working in the college’s own salon’. There is a specialist make-up design course on which students will be taught the wide range of skills required of the contemporary make-up artist.
Alongside practical work, they will ‘engage with the cultural significance of make-up in a society and discover the historic power of beauty products’.
Students will also become ‘expert in hairstyles, wig dressing and making, fashion styling and make-up.’
Again, we can leave aside the question of whether a Cambridge mathematics degree is worth more than a degree in Carnival Arts from one of Dr. Ebdon’s schools. The question that should concern us is how can we judge? The answer is that we can’t, starting from Dr. Ebdon’s first principles. Unlike a world in which prices are based on the market and morality is based on some externally agreed ‘natural law’ or intellectual excellence is measured by some market force, in a world where PC rules the roost, “someone” decides these things for the public. There is no external reference to anything.
It’s not clear who. But someone does. Someone, for example, decided at some point that Global Warming became Climate Change. So why not with pregnancies? Women who want an abortion on the basis of gender selection are guilty of something, but women who want to terminate a pregnancy because it will dampen their vacation are alright. Someone will pronounce on the subject.
But how, apart from memorizing all these rules, is one to know whether A>B? Is it alright, for example for an Hispanic man to address a Black man in a certain way? What about a Black man talking to an Asian man? What if one of them is gay? Or disabled? Or disabled and gay?
What the Left needs is some version of “Ask the Imam” to settle all these questions, otherwise things will get too confusing.
Now returning to the incident of the man who was arrested for being depicted in his daughter’s drawing holding a gun, isn’t that OK because “it’s for the children?” Shouldn’t the precautionary principle rule? Why not arrest him after all? Or is it child abuse by the teachers and the cops? Above all, how ‘s a body going to make sense of any of it?
In a system which has decided to completely divorce itself from any relationship with reality, where god is the Party, or Gaia; where prices are set by a panel — like health care prices — and where everyone can have a degree because it’s a “right”, there is no way to order values. Everything is entirely arbitrary. And as proof, you will observe that its values vary from one minute to the next, as each person tries to divine what the Party Line — or better stated “the consensus” — is now.
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This story cracks me up.
What can’t last, won’t last.
Ebdon was trained as a chemist, apparently, and holds a BSc and PhD from Imperial College, London. Possibly a trace of Oxbridge envy at work?
From Wikipedia: “After lecturing at Makerere University, Kampala from 1971-3 and Sheffield City Polytechnic from 1973–80, he joined what is now the University of Plymouth in 1981 as a lecturer in Analytical Chemistry. In 1989 he was promoted to Head of Department of Environmental Sciences and eventually rose to Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic Development).
Ebdon’s research interests are in environmental analytical chemistry and his various contributions to our understanding of the behaviour and importance of trace elements in the environment have led to over 250 publications and to several awards. . . . . Ebdon is a member of the DTI’s Measurement Advisory committee and Chair of a Sub Committee, and he is also a member of the European Union DGXII Certification Working Group, known particularly for his expertise on environmental certified reference materials.
Ebdon is a member of the Advisory Board of the Central Science Laboratory of DEFRA. He is currently Chair of Chemistry World Editorial Board and a Member of the Publications Board of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Ebdon is a member of the Structure and Bonding College of the EPSRC and has chaired various EPRC committees and served on many Royal Society of Chemistry, National Environmental Research Committees, Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food and DTI Review Groups.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Ebdon
Well, there you have it– dude is PC with regard to the environment, the EU, and the food police– “better living through chemistry,” one assumes. Although that Structure and Bonding College sounds just a wee bit sinister.
Ebdon is clearly the one who would handicap the swift so the halt may keep pace with them.
To satisfy such an imbecile, we must use the RONCO In-the-shell Egg Scrambler on the Frontal Lobes of those with demonstrated intelligence, so they will have no unfair advantage over those will lesser capacities. We must cut the tendons of the virtuoso violinist, and force the coluratura soprano gargle with sulfuric acid, so no tone-deaf hog-callers need be embarrassed at the gulf tween themselves and any other vocalist. We must burn all books in the library, so no stubborn ignoramus can be at a disadvantage in seeking high office.
But, Wait!
Ebdon’s elevation to such power over higher education in the UK PROVES that being a decerebrate chowderhead is no longer any disadvantage in one’s career.
Another words, we don’t need to keep promoting doofusses.
Of course, that a man can be arrested for his own child’s DRAWING depicting him holding a gun is insane.
P.C. run amok is old news.
wretchard, thanks for keeping us up to date on the thinking over at socialist world. blech. y’see that’s the problem, minority nutball ideas get leverage over the Internet, instead of just isolated card tables in liquor store parking lots. it’s the opposite of herd immunity that used to isolate crazy ideas (presuming a mostly sane populace), it is a chance for pathogens to find new victims across space.
it’s a pre-internet observation that delphi situations, with semi-anonymous participants, let otherwise normal people run to extremes of opinion. it takes a certain training or natural bent to do what seems the style here at BC, to try to run to the extreme – of rationality! to seek the normal – does not seem to be the normal mode. C.S. Lewis noted this at length long ago, and in other ways so did David Lynch in stuff like Blue Velvet. only in the aggregate is the average “normal”, individuals are all over the map. such diversity may ultimately be healthy overall, but of course it’s going to be rough on some of the individuals and the process is not friction free.
as I said before, blech.
–
so if the kid draws his father feeding a multitude with loaves and fishes, then what?
You’ve gathered evidence that is all part of a single piece that is actively disturbing our peace.
In a Politically Cowered world where Lincompoops such as the Asian American Journalists Association arise out of nowhere and are instantly recognized as policy czars, what sort of ninnies are the rest of us?
“If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.”…..It is either that or somebody is going to beat you with an aluminum base ball bat at a blanket party.
It’s not about making sense so much as it’s about submitting to our ‘betters’ will.
A timely sample problem to analyze under these “rules”
This insanity comes courtesy of the latest fuzzy left incarnation of the Liberals. The Tories standing for this may well discredit themselves and shift votes to minor (BNP UKIP) or regional parties. That could throw the next election to Labour. The public may forget the antics of looney left councils and vote hoping for a tough minded old fashioned working class government without Green and PC pretensions.
In a real Soviet-Marxist state resources are diverted from consumer goods and services like Cosmetology to the best research universities and no selfish cant on the part of women is tolerated. Abortions may be easy to get but not to enhance anyone’s self esteem. In the Worker’s Paradise you get an abortion so you can get back to work.
The world is nuts
No ifs or buts
It’s PC rules
For redneck fools
And races byed
So all are tied
Where brains all count
A like amount
And talent’s hid
At PC’s bid
So dorks won’t scream
At lost esteem
Where beauty’s lost
Because the cost
Of brilliance may
Bring into play
The wicked thought
That talent ought
Not be dispersed
To best and worst
Without regard
To working hard
To pay the price
To roll the dice
To get ahead
What’s right instead
Is all must share
We must be fair
And who shall see
These things will be?
Do not ask who
It won’t be you
Look, we all agree about the idiocy of Political Correctness.
Now, to the real fire behind part of the PC smoke — “He is vehemently against the ‘Oxbridge Obsession’”
This brings us back to President Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961. So much modern research depends on government distribution of taxpayer money. To quote the man himself — “Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
So who in the UK gets to decide that Cambridge U gets the big bucks for research, while Salford U gets chump change? (Hey! The guys at Salford complained, so they get the new BBC HQ instead. That’ll teach’em!).
In most western countries we have ended up with a ‘virtuous’ circle: the prestigious institutions get the taxpayer grants, and that makes them prestigious. Whether it makes them good is quite another question. Certainly, the person who was waiting for scientific integrity from Cambridge U on, say, Anthropogenic Global Warming has been waiting for a very long time.
All I am suggesting is that Ebdon, like the stopped clock, may be right just this once. There has to be a better way to promote real diversity of thought in research than to earmark most of the funds for a handful of institutions that once were great.
While I agree access to abortion has some downsides (under the current paradigm we need the next generation to pay social security for us) I am more interested in taking the logic behind Roe v Wade and using it further limit government. If the right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion, why does it not extend to what men do with their bodies and with what do with the other parts of their bodies besides the reproductive system? I do not thin the government has the right to tell citizens what we can and cannot put in our bodies. That should include contraband drugs, prescription drugs, medical devices, breast implants, new /experimental drugs, new /experimental medical devices and new /experimental breast implants.
But the current setup with the FDA and the war on drugs creates so many opportunities for graft and enrichment in and around the government that we see both parties very committed to both.
Yet somehow on the left there is this one exception for abortion….
Mad Fiddler…
You seem to be bouncing around his desire for a ‘bed of Procrustes.’
For that must surely be a necessary tool on his path to flatten out the degree curve — flat-line them as it were.
All the Americans here better pay good close attention to that Sun news clip- this is Canada after the Trudeaupian revolution. We’re trying to clean up the mess now, but as you can well see, it’s not going to be easy, nor will it be quick. The whole of the bureaucracy is against conservative thought. The only good thing is that this time they stuck their necks out too far. It’s nice when ideological rigidity hands you a victory.
I am not unsympathetic to the arguments against establishment candidates. Up here, conservatives told the establishment leadership to shove it. Then we endured our time in the wilderness, before a real conservative alternative rose up.
On the other hand, the “lesser of two evils” argument may apply in your situation. The damage Trudeau wrought on our nation and way of life is not something I wish to see dealt to my neighbors to the south. We were lucky- most of the damage had already been done, and finances didn’t allow for too much more damage in the meantime. You may not have that luxury of time.
But like the Elves I say neither yay nor nay- but like Stalin used to say, perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Dang, I would sure like to get me a piece of the legal work against the Waterloons (school and cops) who, incapable of differentiating between a firearm and the scribble of a child in kindergarten, strip a man of his liberty without so much as a warrant. Frankly, he’s lucky to be alive. The school principal and police chief should be disciplined for failing to mobilize the SWAT team and simply gun him down when he came up the school drive. You can’t be too careful.
Seriously, if these people are not given jail time, and the municipality bankrupted for damages for false arrest, then we should abandon all hope. Public servants, my keister.
W: “The Liberal Democratic Party of the UK have used their position in the ruling coalition government to appoint an academic called Les Ebdon to a position of supervision over all universities. Ebdon’s stated goal is to make all university degrees equivalent to each other.”
The stated goal of cultural Marxism (Political Correctness) is to make the grades of all students equivalent to each other – and to make the percentages of all students in graduate school equivalent to each other in regard to skin color and gender (affirmative action). The stated goal of Karl Marx was to make all people economically eqivalent to each other – except of course for the not-to-be-equalized Marxist equalizers.
Please don’t point out that some universities are naturally academically superior to others in certain areas due to the superior creativity of certain teachers and administrators – natural teaching academic inequality. You must refuse to acknowledge that some students are more intelligent or study harder than others and – are thereby more fit for graduate school admission than others – and that such academic fitness is measurable via cognitive achievement (testing) rather than by skin color or gender – natural student academic inequality. Never speak the truth that some people are naturally more intelligent or hard-working than others and thereby come into possession of greater property than other people – natural economic inequality.
The pathologic heart of Marxism in all of its manifestations is the forceful abolition of natural human inequality of any type, whether for individuals or groups of individuals. Natural inequality occurs without force, and that can’t be tolerated because the real goal of Marxism is the pathologic urge of a small group of people to use force against the great mass of people in order to make everything equal which is naturally unequal – where unnatural (forceful) oligarchic social engineering is supreme. Marxists will not tolerate natural human inequality because they don’t get to use force when human activity is left to its self – where natural unforced human freedom is supreme.
“Equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
“The usual understanding of “equality,” when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity. But what is meant in all these [Socialist] cases is the equalization of external conditions [social and economic outcome] which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics, i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
W: “In a system which has decided to completely divorce itself from any relationship with reality, where god is the Party… where prices are set by a panel… where everyone can have a degree because it’s a “right”, there is no way to order values. Everything is entirely arbitrary.”
“World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them–all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis… The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice…” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
“Even the names of the four ministries by which we are governed exhibits a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts; the ministry of peace concerns its self with war; the ministry of truth with lies; the ministry of love with torture: and the ministry of plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink… Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously [the truth and the lie], and accepting both of them [insanity]… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” George Orwell – 1984
Storm Rider.
Most of Orwell’s magnum opus was detailed commentary based on real observations. But his one comment that underscored what this is all about was
We are witnessing the complete and utter hatred for humanity, the one animal capable of extended reasoning.
And I personally am convinced this hatred exists simply because the monsters really believe that he is made in the image of God.
Re. Wretchard “…where prices are set by a panel …”
Such panel actually existed in the Soviet Union. It was called “comitet po tsenoobrazovaniyu”. And I must submit that in the environment without market feedback signals, something like this is a necessity.
If this mob had but one throat, I’d cut it.
– Caligula (an extremely prescient and farsighted philosopher)
Grrr #19:
And such a panel existed in that other bastion of Socialism, Washington State.
Back in the late 80′s it was asserted that it was “unfair” for some people to get paid such and such when they were obviously”better” than other people. The prime example was teachers and garbagemen. The fact that one profession has much nicer working conditions than the other and you have to pay garbagemen more than teachers (in WA, anyway) in order to have any garbagemen working does not matter. A panel would review professions and decide that if garbagemen get paid such and such then teachers have to be paid so much more because they are simply worth more than garbagemen. I don’t know how long that idea lasted.
W says, “When does one set of PC rules trump another?”
The Left has been stymied by this conundrum since the early days of the environmental movement.
“What do you do when an endangered animal eats an endangered plant?”
Other than wailing and breast-beating, he Left has never been able to get its mind around this self-contradiction. Since it’s all about control anyway, perhaps the most desirable approach is just to appoint a new well-funded bi-lateral (tri-lateral, quad-lateral, multi-lateral?) agency to study the problem and issue binding edicts.
Next up: Nobel prizes for clown acts. Oh wait: we already had that when Obama was awarded the Peace Prize for what he was going to do in the future.
Meanwhile, is the US position in Afghanistan untenable as of today?
Knowing we are leaving anyway, building on protests about the burning of Korans, the press coverage makes it sound like the people are rising against Americans as the fanatics in dar al-Islam have always attacked anything non-Islamic. Of course not everyone, but sufficient, given our ROE, and our sensitivity to our own casualties, to make our position impossible. We can pull out of the cities as we originally did in Iraq, which makes us completely ineffective, but still not safe. Is it over, now, today?
Or is the press coverage completely biased, as in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, forty years and a month ago?
Wretchard: Everything is entirely arbitrary.
This is simply another way of saying that “everybody has gone insane.”
Or “the inmates now rule the asylum.“
“When does one set of PC rules trump another?”
Or, ‘When progressive pieties collide’.
I reckon if the day ever comes when sexual orientation can be determined in the womb, you’ll see a retreat from abortion-on-demand absolutism.
All progressive ‘principles’ are infinitely conditional. It’s how BIll Clinton’s serial predations were excused, but Mark Foley’s racy text messages ended his career. It’s why feminism looks the other way when it comes to Islam or the rape rate in Maalmo.
See also the Hierarchy of Victimhood over at Dr. Sanity’s website:
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2009/10/victimhood-heirarchy-or-leftist-food.html
Hangtown Bob @ 22: “What do you do when an endangered animal eats an endangered plant?”
A rational leftist would celebrate Darwin. Can’t fight species extinction. It is a vital part of the Faith of Gaia. Most species which ever existed have gone extinct. The ones that have hung in there longest seem to be things like cats — and just what have they done for us lately?
As a result, rational leftists would not support such things as endangered species lists.
Maybe the Arab world has something to teach the PC leftist about how to handle the stated conundrum. Real world example in the Persian Gulf — sea turtles are endangered. Young sea turtles are also a prime part of the diet of a carniverous fish (the hamour) which is considered good eating by human beings, to the extent that over-fishing has put it on the endangered list too. The local solution is to construct hatcheries and protected areas for sea turtles. Unstated is that this will also increase the food supply for those yummy endangered hamour. Win win!
26.VV: I believe I remember reading where researchers believed they had found a key to sexual orientation gene-wise. Haven’t heard any follow ups since so it was either disproved, still pending verification or is being suppressed by “our betters.” My own belief on homosexuality is, it is naturally occurring but not normal behavior of our species, in the way of dyslexia. (It was considered a mental condition until sometime in the seventies, IIRC, re-designated under ZERO scientific analysis, just PC/special interest dictate) It doesn’t make you any less of a person you just process sexuality backwards, so to speak. It does not need to be fixed, AFAIAC, but that is really up to the individual. What if it could be reversed? Would people be suddenly considered inferior for having done so, like when black Americans are successful they are castigated as not being ‘black enough.’ We live in interesting times if we can survive them.
The levelling of the Universities and the elimination of merit is especially ironic in the UK, especially as the Minister of Education recently stood up for elitism in education.
When I was a child in the UK there were, essentially three levels of secondary school, the first was private, oddly called “The Public Schools,” for various historic reasons. The second was “The Grammar Schools,” again the name was historic rather than because they only taught grammar. The third was state schools, usually called “Secondary” though about that time they became “Secondary Modern.”
Both Secondary schools and Grammar schools were state funded. Entrance to the better education of the Grammar schools was previously by choice and independent exam but the government of the day, in order to level opportunity, instituted a test, based on intelligence tests rather than knowledge per se, called “The Eleven Plus.” Brighter students would be sent to the Grammar Schools , mostly originally church founded, where the education was the nearest approximation state funded schools could provide to that of the Public Schools.
Later the Socialist government decreed that offering a better education to gifted students was in effect inherently unfair to those who did not get it and that Grammar Schools would therefore be abolished. When the gifted students were spread around the Secondary schools they would “Pull” the less gifted students along with them. The actual result, of course, was different. The gifted students were mostly reduced to the general level of the classes they were in, and that we exacerbated because ‘streaming’, ie, putting children of higher or lower abilities in separate classes, was abolished by government order too.
Many of the Grammar school students went on to the professions and many to the civil service. By the eighties, when we left, it was said that both were starved of educated talent.
Apparently the Brits learned nothing. What they did to secondary education they are now doing to university education.
I have before observed that a university education is no proof of intelligence, now I’d have to say that there is nothing so dangerous as an educated socialist.
When reality starts outstripping South Park, we’re in trouble…
We live in an era of bad ideas, the worst being
that there are no truths “out there” and that we can
cause ANY idea, by our wishes, to be relatively
superior or inferior. These notions are what the
smart academic Postmodernists believe on college campuses.
If you read a little about Postmodernism [suggested: Explaining
Postmodernism by Stephen R.C. Hicks] I think an
‘aha’ moment awaits you, viz. you will say “Of course, this is
why we are all nuts. This is the proximate
cause and explains our cultural psychosis.”
It all had to do with the “noumena”– a name for ultimate
reality; what is really out there independent of
our thoughts–and I.Kant.
Immanuel Kant shows in Critique of Pure Reason that we
can never know reality because it all enters our
brains through our sense organs which are always
partially defective or heavily biased, i.e., we can
never prove we are not brains in a vat. Accordingly, great sujectivism
and relativism are the most important parts of postmodermism.
Hegel doesn’t help matters. He says “reality is an entirely subjective creation.
Contradictions are built into reason and reality; Since reality evolves contradictorily,
truth is relative to time and place; and the collective, not the indivitual is the operative unit.” Actually, Hicks says that the reasons the Postmodernists are all
politically left are not well understood, but he produces this hypothesis: “Postmodernism is the academic far Left’s epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice.[...] Confronted by harsh evidence and ruthless logic, the far Left had a reply [to socialism's failure]:[..] logic and evidence are subjective; you cannot really prove anything; feelings are deeper than logic; and our feelings say socialism.
And Hicks says: “That is my second hypothesis: Postmodernism is a response to the crisis of faith of the academic far Left. It’s epistemology justifies the leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism, and the same epistemology justifies using language not as a vehicle for seeking truth but as a rhetorical weapon in the continuing battle against capitalism.”
It’s a long story of pounding on the common-sense notions of truth, involving Heidegger, Nietzsche..[many others] and recently Rorty, Foucault, Derrida.
And we need to continue and rejoin the argument. This time, with the
help of our scientists and mathematicians, I think we can prove
that we are not brains in a vat and that there is something
really out there…along with some eternal truths.
This reminds me of the old “Twilight Zone” episode, “The Eye of the Beholder,” where the pig-faced doctors operate repeatedly on a beautiful blonde to try to “correct” her face to look as piglike as their own: when they fail, and she’s still (to our eyes) beautiful, she’s devastated –
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7chrnft
Rod Serling was on to something, unfortunately.
ALL of this social engineering, ALL of it, is a species of malignant envy. Poisonous, malignant, wicked.
Wretchard – also remember the double-standard in place when a man kills a pregnant woman, and is then charged with double-murder. That this will happen in California of all places seems to be the height of utter hypocrisy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Peterson
re: the Carnival Arts. (don’t underrate a good carney).. I find a heartfelt laugh adds more to life than being a member of the faithful (in the party, Gaia or AGW).
Consider Gleick.
He was in the process of mobilizing professional association ethics processes to be used as a means for censuring and silencing (us) heretics. Also ref the Wegman plagiarism complaint – nothing about the science, just evidence of the sloppiness of a writer in a hurry lacking complete citations. As far as I can determine he never represented that work as his own. And yet the press uses the incident to dismiss all his observations and critique of the (lack of) scientific discipline in the AGW work.
Gleick’s institution received grants for studying truck pollution. Did he also contribute to this fraud? Or was he part of an effort by the ideologues in the EPA to recover from the fiasco? Double jeopardy rules should apply to regulators as well as the court system. hmmm. in the coming down-sizing of government perhaps we should abolish regulatory agencies and return to the simpler time of all these arguments being torts.
http://www.cdtoa.org/news/carbnews/1479-ca-legislators-threaten-hearings-if-ucla-fires-carb-whistleblower
And a MacArthur fellow. So we’re reminded again that intelligence minus judgment is intellect. Well, few foundations reflect the values of their benefactor after a decade.
Strange world, your child in school cannot draw a picture of you with a gun but can get condoms, abortions etc without your consent.
The argument is guns kill people and abortion doctors don’t.
Nimrod, when I recently reposted an essay from 2006 in which I used that “Explaining Postmodernism” in a link, I discovered the permalink had disappeared. So I searched hard until I relocated it. In case you had the same problem (so that you left the link off above) here is the new location: http://www.reasonpapers.com/pdf/28/rp_28_8.pdf
There’s a connection too to your namesake. If you go to my blog and search for Nimrod, three posts turn up (although I think Blogger missed a few). In the 2nd hit is that old essay that links to Hicks’ essay. In it I discuss the hatred for the Judeo-Christian ethos by the Statists who seek to be the new Nimrods. Being called “a nimrod” was a taunt when I was in the lower grades. And now it’s respectable again? Funny.
BTW, no insult to you intended: What provoked me to call Obama the new Nimrod was when he said “we are God’s partners in matters of life and death.” Postmodernism, with its self-evident etymology to symbolize the end of any improvements in the future, is the perfect word for regressivism.
Come on by and maybe we can make life more interesting.