extremism - Devils' Lane, CA

The Need For New Laws Dealing with Frivolous And/Or Malignant Scholarship

Outlawing Critical Race Theory and other "divisive concepts" in the education system is a welcome step, but it doesn't address the much bigger problem underneath. "Divisive" doesn't necessarily mean "bad", intellectually-speaking: Galileo and Darwin were divisive; debates divide at the end to discover the result. For sixty years, academics have

politics

The Hopelessly Partisan Impartiality of Fact Checkers

Whenever anyone claims they are offering the "correct" perspective of the facts in a political context, you should be highly suspicious. Cynical, even. Aspiring to the "correct" version or opinion is something the Communist Party of China and their fans in Academia require and mandate you to do. "Fact checking"

communism

A Compendium of Communist Dirty Tactics

Amongst communism's many, many problems is the one searing elephant in the giant empty room: why the proletariat never show up and come along. From Lenin, to Gramsci, to Mao, the same issue has dogged generations of activists; how to carry out the revolution if the incitement doesn't work. The

marxism

The Ugly Spectre of Marxism Raises Its Medusa Head Again

If you're a Marxist, say you're a Marxist. Don't use the unjustified killing of a black man by abusive police officers as a cynical proxy for your attempts to succeed Comrade Lenin. Don't pretend you had any feelings for the man or his family over the excitement of the opportunity

hollywood

Toxic Tropes & Hollywood Economics

That Hollywood sees itself as a vehicle for social engineering is no secret. Whether it's the countless pro-America military extravaganzas (Top Gun, anyone?) or the mockery of it (Team America: World Police) or the ever-pervasive America Saves The World Again schema, the perception of Tinseltown as an engine for manipulating

political correctness

Sandbox Theory: Silicon Valley's Matrix Experiment

The notable increase of globalism in the 1990s, particularly the Internet age, has yielded a realignment of our politics in the Western world to a re-emergent paradigm of individualism vs. collectivism. Not since the Industrial Revolution and its Communist Manifesto has there been such a pronounced dynamic of the people

extremism

Outdated Foes On New Platforms

Children lie dead. Barely hours after the mass murder of 49 people, interest groups from all ends of the spectrum claim the latest appalling slaughter is confirmation of their existing beliefs. Everyone generates a simple low-resolution explanation to use for their own purposes. We all know what comes next: arguments

political correctness

A Descent Into The Laundry Dungeon of Political Correctness

Broadly-speaking, most people tend to find the concept of “political correctness” plain annoying. For others, it is an undemocratic, totalitarian overreach by a cabal of coordinated left-wing nutjob academics who want to turn the world into a giant adult playpen (“fascism pretending to be manners”). For the rationally-minded, however, something

canada

Oh, Canada. The baby, the bathwater, the bathtub, the plumbing, the tiling, actually, screw it, the whole bathroom.

I grew up with great fondness for Canada, with extended family all over the country; from a town that housed a Canadian military ordnance base, leading to a cemetery of WWII graves where the Canadians who sacrificed their lives for the mother country are laid to rest. It’s a

brexit

Brexit: The Echo Chamber Meets British Foreign Policy

Forty years ago, Humphrey Appleby astutely explained the British Foreign Office’s strategy hasn’t changed for over five hundred years. We wanted to ensure the Single Market failed, we went into the EU to ruin it, and our interests are best served by a dis-united Europe. And the latest