There are so many fallacies about race that it would be hard to say which is the most ridiculous. However, one fallacy behind many other fallacies is the notion that there is something unusual about different races being unequally represented in various institutions, careers or at different income or achievement levels.
Yet some racial or ethnic minorities have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in many nations. These have included the Chinese in Malaysia, Lebanese in West Africa, Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Britons in Argentina, Indians in Fiji, Jews in Poland, and Spaniards in Chile — among many others.
Not only different racial and ethnic groups, but whole nations and civilizations, have had very different achievements for centuries. China in the 15th century was more advanced than any country in Europe. Eventually Europeans overtook the Chinese — and there is no evidence of changes in the genes of either of them.
Among the many reasons for different levels of achievement is something as simple as age. The median age in Germany and Japan is over 40, while the median age in Afghanistan and Yemen is under 20. Even if the people in all four of these countries had the same mental potential, the same history, the same culture — and the countries themselves had the same geographic features — the fact that people in some countries have 20 years more experience than people in other countries would still be enough to make equal economic and other outcomes virtually impossible.
Add the fact that different races evolved in different geographic settings, presenting very different opportunities and constraints on their development, and the same conclusion follows. Yet the idea that differences in outcomes are odd, if not sinister, has been repeated mindlessly from street corner demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court.
(AEI)
‘Equality’ has become the prevailing dogma among the intelligentsia. Every institution in society is trying to push for ‘equality’ in terms of equal outcomes or equal representation for disparate groups. And it is automatically assumed that the only reason for unequal outcomes must be discrimination. Thomas Sowell explains why the whole notion of ‘equality’ is a myth, and what the proponents of ‘equality’ get wrong. This is an excerpt from the book ‘The Thomas Sowell Reader’.
(All these numbers have increased A LOTsince Doc Williams made this) Walter Williams critiques The War on Poverty, Schooling and more. However, rather than considering the intentions surrounding certain programs, Williams analyzes the success of the programs according to results, and leaves us wondering, are Free Markets preferable in combating America’s hardships?
2 of My Uploads
Armstrong and Getty discuss the fad of equity, and bring in some audio of Kmele Foster on the Bill Maher show.
…Use of Indigenous Knowledge as evidence in Highly Influential Scientific Assessments poses serious risks, experts told the Free Beacon.
“This is extremely dangerous,”said Anna Krylov, a professor of science, engineering, and chemistry at the University of Southern California. “When I conduct experiments, I need to follow the rules and procedures and think about safety. I have to keep track of what I’m doing. I’m not thinking about chants or dancing.”
In addition to the Office of Science and Technology Policy memo, the White House has released more than threedozendocuments that favorably cite Indigenous Knowledge. In one memo, the White House said Indigenous Knowledge is part of its “commitment to scientific integrity and knowledge and evidence-based policymaking.” In another, the White House said that science faces “limitations” given its refusal to incorporate Native religious principles.
A March 2022 Environmental Protection Agency webinar entitled “Advancing Considerations of Traditional Knowledge into Federal Decision Making” featured an Indigenous Knowledge expert who explained that the “Native Worldview” does not consider time as “sequential” but rather “cyclical.” Another participant, Natalie Solares, who works for a tribal consortium, suggested paying tribal elders $100 an hour to assist in federal rulemaking.
Gretchen Goldman, a senior official in the Office for Science and Technology Policy, lamented during the seminar that federal processes can be biased against “something that’s not a peer-reviewed academic document.”
“There are places we can, you know, just remove any barriers to fully incorporate Indigenous Knowledge into the process the same way that we would for academic science,” she said.
The U.S. Geological Survey drew on Native religious traditions in an April webinar called “Incorporating Indigenous Knowledges into Federal Research and Management: What are Indigenous Knowledges?” Federal regulators and scientists were told to consider whether various food cultivation methods were considered sacred by a Native tribe. Failing to do so would “disrespect the spirits,” said Melonee Montano, a traditional ecological knowledge outreach specialist for a consortium of native tribes.
City University professor Massimo Pigliucci, a biologist and philosopher of science, told the Free Beacon: “When I start hearing things about how there’s this other dimension where, you know, the animals interact with humans at a different level of reality, that’s just not a thing. It’s not a scientific thing. You can believe that and you have the right to believe it, but it’s not empirical evidence.”
San Jose State University anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss warned that official reliance on Indigenous Knowledge could easily go from “dumb” to destructive. She pointed to reports that a Hawaii official delayed the release of water that was urgently needed to fight last month’s deadly wildfires on Maui by requiring consultation with a local farmer.
“The case is still out about the Maui fires and whether withholding the water was based on Indigenous Knowledge decisions, for example,” Weiss said.
A critical problem with Indigenous Knowledge is that its definition is borderline circular: Nearly anything can be considered Indigenous Knowledge if it was declared so by a Native person. Gregory Cajete, a University of New Mexico professor who lectured NASA on “Indigenous Perspectives on Earth and Sky” in July, said in his book Native Science that it is “a broad term that can include metaphysics and philosophy” as well as “art and architecture” and “ritual and ceremony practiced by Indigenous peoples past and present.”
“Much of the essence of Native science is beyond literal description,” Cajete wrote.
Given the lack of clarity on the definition of Indigenous Knowledge, it is difficult to discern what role it can play in federal policymaking. Some tribes are working to keep it that way…..
This story got me ranting in my head and now on my computer screen. Here is the story via THE DAILY CALLER:
President Joe Biden’s administration hosted “Indigenous Knowledge” seminars, including one where a speaker admonished scientist attendees about “disrespecting” knowledge provided by “spirits,” according to a video uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) told dozens of federal agencies to adopt “Indigenous Knowledge” for “research, policies, and decision making,” in a November 2022 memo. In April, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) hosted a webinar titled “Incorporating Indigenous Knowledges into Federal Research and Management,” in which a speaker warned scientists about “disrespecting” indigenous knowledge, including “spirits.”
“When you ask for knowledge and you take it and use it in a way that you didn’t intend or you misuse it, you’re not only disrespecting that individual that you sought that knowledge from,” Traditional Ecological Knowledge Outreach Specialist Melonee Montano said in the April webinar attended by scientists. “You’re disrespecting the teachers that they obtained the knowledge from. You’re disrespecting those spirits that may have brought that knowledge to them through a dream.”
[….]
The Biden administration promoted the OSTP to a cabinet-level agency in 2021. Moreover, the November OSTP memo also suggests collaborating with “spiritual leaders.”The White House has published over three dozen documents that positively reference “Indigenous Knowledge,”according to the Free Beacon’s investigation. A December memo states the Biden administration acknowledges that “Indigenous Knowledge … contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States.”
[….]
Manuel prioritized incorporating “indigenous knowledge to the fields of water advocacy and management in Hawaii,” which allegedly could have contributed to the worsening of the Hawaii wildfires…..
Nice to see [/sarcasm] the official doctrine of these Leftist idealogues are so captured by cultural relativism and multiculturalism that all practices boil down to being just as beneficial as other cultures actions/understandings.
I guess all the past criticisms I have gotten as an armchair apologist serving some “sky god” that explained “lightning” is moot now. Having written and read the leading creationists and intelligent design authors throughout 3-decades…
as well as many leading evolutionary/atheists works – R. Dawkins, K. Nielsen, D. Dennett, Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, S. Harris, M. Martin, L. Wolpert, D. Barker, W. Provine, C. Hitchens, E. Mayr, S.J. Gould, J. Coyne, E.O. Wilson, C. Darwin, C. Zimmer, K. Miller, J. Loftus, B. Forrest and early A. Flew, etc., etc. [to name a few]
…and debating and pushing back on philosophical naturalism and it’s deleterious effects on science, I have been often accused of thinking that “god, or, gods,” cause natural phenomenon like lightning. And then it is quickly followed with, “since we have given up ‘sky gods’ and ‘superstitious’ beliefs, science explains these natural wonders better that our past primitive and religious explanations ever could.
However, with the push for DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and the years of “cultural relativistic” position in multicultural pushes through the lens of Leftism, we have come to a place that not only destroys science but is reverting us back to what evolutionary atheists accuse [wrongly I might add] theists of.
So here we are… full circle right back to paganism. Rather than the scientific revolution started and led by theists… the Left takes us back to primitive animism.
Here are just some abstracts to exemplify this thinking creeping into science:
I argue that it is rational and appropriate for atheists to give thanks to deep impersonal agents for the benefits they give to us. These agents include our evolving biosphere, the sun, and our finely-tuned universe. Atheists can give thanks to evolution by sacrificially burning works of art. They can give thanks to the sun by performing rituals in solar calendars (like stone circles). They can give thanks to our finely-tuned universe, and to existence itself, by doing science and philosophy. But these linguistic types of thanks-giving are forms of non-theistic contemplative prayer. Since these behaviors resemble ancient pagan behaviors, it is fair to call them pagan. Atheistic paganism may be part of an emerging ecosystem of naturalistic religions.
— Eric Steinhart, William Paterson University, “Atheists Giving Thanks to the Sun,” July 2021Philosophia 49(20150711): 1-14
The traditional common consent argument for the existence of God has largely been abandoned—and rightly so. In this paper, I attempt to salvage the strongest version of the argument. Surprisingly, the strongest version of the argument supports the proposition, not that a god exists, but that animism is probably true and that such things as mountain, river, and forest spirits probably exist. I consider some plausible debunking arguments, ultimately finding that it is trickier to debunk the animist’s claims than it might first appear. I conclude that there exists one significant argument in favour of animism that has hitherto gone unstated in the philosophy of religion.
— Tiddy Smith, University of Otago, “The Common Consent Argument for the Existence of Nature Spirits,” April 2020Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98(3) DOI:10.1080/00048402.2019.1621912
Animism has been defined in many ways. Tylor defines it as the “the theory which endows the phenomena of nature with personal life” (1866: 82). Bird-David lists several definitions of animism: “the attribution of life or divinity to such natural phenomena as trees, thunder, or celestial bodies”; “the belief that all life is produced by a spiritual force, or that all natural phenomena have souls”; the belief that “trees, mountains, rivers and other natural formations possess an animating power or spirit” (1999: S67). Brown and Walker say animism is “an ontology in which objects and other non-human beings possess souls, life-force, and qualities of personhood” (2008: 297). Coeckelbergh says, “For animists, objects have (individual) spirits” (2010: 965). According to Helander-Renvall, animism means that “there are no clear borders between spirit and matter…. all beings in nature are considered to have souls or spirit” (2010: 44). Smith says animism involves “belief in nature spirits, such as mountain spirits, animal spirits, and weather spirits” (2019: 2–3). Definitions like these are easily multiplied.
— Eric Steinhart, “Scientific Animism,” Part of the Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion book series (PFPR) | Animism and Philosophy of Religion
POWERLINE noted this regarding “indegenouse knowledge vs. scientific knowledge… unless our government is acknowledging the science they push is “scientism” just as “indegenouse science” is “scientism:
The Biden administration has released a “guidance” to federal agencies that calls on them to include “Indigenous Knowledge” in decision making:
Today, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) jointly released new government-wide guidance and an accompanying implementation memorandum for Federal Agencies on recognizing and including Indigenous Knowledge in Federal research, policy, and decision making.
You may wonder, what the Hell is “Indigenous Knowledge”? Obviously, there is no such thing. There is just knowledge. Just as there is only science. Not “Indigenous Science.”….
Often these are driven by not only the genuflection created by multicultural relativism, but a Marxian “anti-capitalist/anti-West drive.
For example:
INTRODUCTION
Animism is said to be the most fundamental form and starting point of religious belief (Stringer, 2013). This concept has been used in cultural anthropology since the late 1800s but, due to inconsistencies in research ontologies, fell out of favour as an ethnographic research tool (Bird-David, 1999). A return to, and modification of, this concept has been witnessed over the turn of the century as researchers seek to better understand how the tool may once again be utilized. In this essay I discuss how modern conceptualisations of animism may shape human/non-human interactions and relations. I provide a brief history of the concept and discuss how its limitations excluded it from cultural anthropology’s tool kit for the better part of a century. Following this, I outline the contemporary conceptualizations of animism, or new animism, and how they seek to address the term’s original misdirection. Modern use of animism in South India, South America and Burkina Faso highlight the variability within the concept itself as well as the consistency of relational epistemology: bridging the gap between the “self” and “other.” To conclude this essay, I explore the possibilities of Western (and global) integration of traditional peoples’ epistemologies to reduce Cartesian dualism of humans and nature, which contribute to the exploitation and degradation of natural beings. This is seen in the emerging field of ecopsychology, which seeks to address issues inherent in pro-environmental communication with the general public through a recalibration of philosophical understandings.
[….]
CONCLUSION
From its roots as a misguided and derogatory concept to contemporary contextualisation, animism continues to provide cultural anthropology with a useful tool of ethnographic enquiry. The literature shows variation in animistic conventions throughout traditional peoples in different societies. However, a constant theme of relational epistemology persists in almost all of them. This distinction is not only important in understanding differences between traditional cultures but also for recognising limitations to the Western capitalist-driven, utilitarian ontology that has resulted in continued environmental devaluation and degradation. Acknowledging these flaws presents the potential to reconnect a sensual relation with the earth that suppresses, or even destroys, the Cartesian duality of human and non-human.
This is not the place to get into the topic… but, “the Western capitalist-driven, utilitarian ontology” via the Protestant work ethic and ethos imported agricultural practices and inventions actually saved indigenous cultures.
My people in India did not lack creative genius. They erected great monuments to gods and goddesses and built palaces for kings and queens. But our worldview did not inspire these same engineering skills to be directed toward labor-saving devices. My personal interest in McCormick is rooted in the fact that his widow, Nancy McCormick, financed the building of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute in my hometown, Allahabad, on the banks of the river Yamuna. My brother studied in this institute and, for a few years, I cycled there every Sunday afternoon to study the Bible.
Between 2002 and 2006, from two to twenty thousand people— mostly Hindus—gathered there every Sunday for spiritual fellowship. This is significant because one of the holiest Hindu sites in India— the confluence of the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna—is less than three miles from the Institute. As mentioned in chapter 12, practically every important Hindu holy man has come to this confluence during the last two thousand years; so have most politicians and wealthy merchants. Not one of them, however, ever started an institution to serve poor peasants.
The Agricultural Institute, now a Deemed University, was established by Sam Higginbottom, a professor of economics in my alma mater.* He saw the plight of the peasants, returned to America to study agriculture, forged links with McCormick’s family, and returned to establish this institute. His purpose was to inject into Indian culture McCormick’s spirit of loving one’s neighbors enough to attempt to alleviate their suffering.
Love is not a common ethical principle of all religions. No Hindu sage did anything like Sam Higginbottom did, because in order to be spiritual, the learned pundits had to separate themselves from the peasants, not serve them. The hallmark of Indian spirituality was detachment from worldly pursuits like agriculture. Therefore, the spiritually “advanced” in my country treated the toiling masses as untouchables.
McCormick’s reaper reinforces the point made in an earlier chapter—that necessity is not “the mother of invention.” All agricultural societies have needed to harvest grain. But no other culture invented a reaper. Most cultures met this need by forcing into backbreaking labor those who were too weak to say no—landless laborers, servants, slaves, women, and children. McCormick struggled to find a better way. The driving force in his life becomes apparent when you notice that he gave substantial portions of his income to promote the Bible through several projects including newspapers** and the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Chicago, which was renamed the McCormick Seminary.
Cyrus was born to a Puritan couple, Robert and Mary Ann McCormick, in 1809, in a log cabin in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His Scotch-Irish ancestors came to America in 1735 with little more than a Bible and the teachings of the Protestant reformers John Calvin and John Knox.
These reformers had embraced the Hebrew ideal of the dignity of labor. In addition, reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, introduced to the European mind the radical biblical idea that the calling or vocation of a peasant or a mason was as high as that of a priest or a monk. Every believer was a saint and ought to fulfill his or her vocation for the glory of God. In the words of sociologist Max Weber:
But at least one thing [in the Protestant mind-set] was unquestionably new: the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which inevitably gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance, and which first created the conception of a calling in this sense. . . . The only way of living acceptably to God was not to surpass the worldly morality in monastic asceticism, but solely through the fulfillment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world. That was his calling”2
Cyrus McCormick didn’t like harvesting with a sickle or scythe. Had he lived before the Reformation, he might have escaped the drudgery of toil by going to a university or becoming a priest. This was normal in Orthodox and Catholic cultures. Even St. Thomas Aquinas—perhaps the greatest theologian of the last millennium— justified the tradition by advocating that while the biblical obligation to work rested upon the human race as a whole, it was not binding on every individual, especially not on religious individuals who were called to pray and meditate.***
The McCormick family rejected that medieval idea to follow the teachings of Richard Baxter (1615–91), the English Puritan theologian, scholar, and writer, who believed that God’s command to work was unconditional. No one could claim exemption from work on the grounds that he had enough wealth on which to live. Baxter wrote, “You are no more excused from service of work . . . than the poorest man. God has strictly commanded [labor] to all.”3
It is important to note that this work ethic, which made England and America different from Italy or Russia, was biblical—not Puritan per se.
Quakers, like McCormick’s rival, Obed Hussey,****shared the same worldview. This biblical work ethic, later called the “Protestant work ethic,” was driven into Cyrus from childhood. Both his friends and critics acknowledged that he was a workaholic***** with an indomitable perseverance and a bulldog’s tenacity. McCormick’s passion for focused work made him very wealthy, but his work ethic was a product of his religious culture, not his desire for wealth.
The West’s rapid economic progress began when it adopted the materialistic spirituality of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). For it is in Genesis that God declares the material universe to be good. Many ancient worldviews, such as India’s, had looked upon the material realm as intrinsically evil—something to be delivered from. Christian philosophers who studied the Bible noted that sin resulted in a breakdown of the relationship between God, man, and nature. The most influential exponent of this insight was Francis Bacon, who had a profound impact on the American mind.4
McCormick was nurtured on the biblical idea that through godly and creative work human beings can roll back the curse of sweat and toil and reestablish their dominion over nature. To repeat, my ancestors did not lack intelligence, but our genius was expressed in a philosophy that taught us to worship nature instead of establishing dominion over it. Economic development involves not worshipping but harnessing natural resources and energy for human consumption, albeit with foresight and a sense of stewardship.
Francis Bacon’s exposition of the Bible instilled a non-fatalistic philosophy in England and America. It implied that the future could be better than the past. As explained in previous chapters, this Hebrew concept was born in Israel’s collective experience of God. When God intervened in human history to liberate them from their slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews learned that God could change their destiny for the better. And since men and women were created in God’s image, they, too, could forge a better future for themselves through creative efforts.
This belief became an integral feature of modern Western culture and proved to be a powerful economic asset that would set the West apart from the rest of the world. While other cultures sought magical powers through
ritual and sacrifice, the West began cultivating technological and scientific powers. McCormick’s grandparents, like most European Puritans who fled from religious persecution to the liberty of America, interpreted their experience as being similar to that of the Israelites being set free from the bondage of slavery.
An important aspect of Moses’ mission was to teach God’s law to the Israelites. A cornerstone of this teaching was that while wickedness makes some individuals rich, it impoverishes entire nations. According to the Bible, a nation is exalted by righteousness.5 Cyrus’s forefathers believed that the blessings of righteousness were not exclusive to the Jews. God chose Abraham to bless all the nations of the earth. All true believers, they reasoned, were God’s chosen people. Therefore, it is wrong for God’s beloved to accept poverty as their fate. Even if one’s poverty were a result of sin, either one’s own or one’s ancestors, it was possible to repent and receive God’s forgiveness and the power to live a righteous life. It is not surprising, then, that within a century after Thomas McCormick’s arrival in Philadelphia, his grandson’s family owned an estate of twelve hundred acres.
Cyrus’s family owned slaves, as did so many others of their time. They were products of their era and could have purchased more human labor to bring in their harvests. One difference the Bible made was that it demanded the McCormicks work just as hard as any of their slaves. We know that by the age of fifteen, Cyrus had despaired of seeing people slave in the fields. That’s when he resolved to build upon his father’s failed attempts to find a better method for harvesting grain.
SPIRITUALITY OR GREED?
The 2010 movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps powerfully shows how secularism confuses ambition and greed. Ambition is good, but it becomes greed when separated from moral absolutes. Greed is a destructive part of human nature. It brought to India not only Europeans, but also the Aryan and Muslim invaders. Greed explains the loot of Alexander the Great and Nadir Shah, but not the creativity of industrial capitalism. Pioneers of modern economic enterprise, such as Cyrus McCormick, did want to make money, but they were inspired by something nobler.
The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2011), pages are unknown due to Kindle and PDF conversation — from chapter seventeen.
FOOTNOTES
*In India colleges function under a university chartered by the Government. Deemed University is a status of autonomy granted to high performing institutes and departments of various universities in India. I did my Intermediate studies (grades 11 and 12) at Jamuna Christian College, a part of Ewing Christian College, in Higginbottom’s time. Now independent, it is still located across the river from the Agricultural Institute.
**The modern press is a product of the Puritan revolution in England, and a substitute for the biblical institution of the prophet. A century ago, most newspapers in America were Christian.
***During the Middle Ages religious individuals were paid to sit the whole day and pray for the souls of their deceased relatives. In Hindu and Buddhist cultures, peasants provided for ascetics who did nothing besides meditate.
****Hussey patented his reaper in 1834 but lost the marketing race to McCormick.
***** The term “workaholic” is used only in a negative sense today. However, even our leisure-driven age accepts that no one excels in a given field and becomes a distinguished scientist, athlete, inventor, or businessman without working harder than her or his peers.
2.Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 80.
4.See for example, George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006).
5.Proverbs 14:34.
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people (Proverbs 14:34, CSB)
Verse 34 is well-known. History has demonstrated many times that its teaching is true. The thrust of the passage transcends Judaism; what it says is pertinent to any and all nations, but it is most fully exemplified in the history of Israel. When counselees complain about various governmental inequities, this is the verse to turn to. Then, having read it, you may wish to observe: “You may become a part of the solution to our country’s failings by becoming a part of the righteous group who exalt a nation.”
Jay E. Adams, Proverbs, The Christian Counselor’s Commentary (Cordova, TN: Institute for Nouthetic Studies, 2020), 113.
Crop rotation, largely a Western improvement, combined with the inventiveness of the West helped the indigenous cultures as well. Even the Native Americans largely “practiced slash and burn agriculture. When soils became infertile, wood for fuel was exhausted, and game depleted, whole villages moved” (Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, W.W. Norton & Company; New York: NY [1999], p. 76).
More on the history of this agricultural practice of “rotation” and top-soil.
Crop Rotation
One of the most important innovations of the Agricultural Revolution was the development of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which greatly increased crop and livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow.
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons to help restore plant nutrients and mitigate the build-up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one plant species is continuously cropped. Rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. The Norfolk System, as it is now known, rotates crops so that different crops are planted with the result that different kinds and quantities of nutrients are taken from the soil as the plants grow. An important feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labor at times when demand was not at peak levels. Planting cover crops such as turnips and clover was not permitted under the common field system because they interfered with access to the fields and other people’s livestock could graze the turnips.
During the Middle Ages, the open field system initially used a two-field crop rotation system where one field was left fallow or turned into pasture for a time to try to recover some of its plant nutrients. Later, a three-year three-field crop rotation routine was employed, with a different crop in each of two fields, e.g. oats, rye, wheat, and barley with the second field growing a legume like peas or beans, and the third field fallow. Usually from 10–30% of the arable land in a three-crop rotation system is fallow. Each field was rotated into a different crop nearly every year. Over the following two centuries, the regular planting of legumes such as peas and beans in the fields that were previously fallow slowly restored the fertility of some croplands. The planting of legumes helped to increase plant growth in the empty field due to the bacteria on legume roots’ ability to fix nitrogen from the air into the soil in a form that plants could use. Other crops that were occasionally grown were flax and members of the mustard family. The practice of convertible husbandry, or the alternation of a field between pasture and grain, introduced pasture into the rotation. Because nitrogen builds up slowly over time in pasture, plowing pasture and planting grains resulted in high yields for a few years. A big disadvantage of convertible husbandry, however, was the hard work that had to be put into breaking up pastures and difficulty in establishing them.
It was the farmers in Flanders (in parts of France and current-day Belgium) that discovered a still more effective four-field crop rotation system, using turnips and clover (a legume) as forage crops to replace the three-year crop rotation fallow year. The four-field rotation system allowed farmers to restore soil fertility and restore some of the plant nutrients removed with the crops. Turnips first show up in the probate records in England as early as 1638 but were not widely used until about 1750. Fallow land was about 20% of the arable area in England in 1700 before turnips and clover were extensively grown. Guano and nitrates from South America were introduced in the mid-19th century and fallow steadily declined to reach only about 4% in 1900. Ideally, wheat, barley, turnips, and clover would be planted in that order in each field in successive years. The turnips helped keep the weeds down and were an excellent forage crop—ruminant animals could eat their tops and roots through a large part of the summer and winters. There was no need to let the soil lie fallow as clover would add nitrates (nitrogen-containing salts) back to the soil. The clover made excellent pasture and hay fields as well as green manure when it was plowed under after one or two years. The addition of clover and turnips allowed more animals to be kept through the winter, which in turn produced more milk, cheese, meat, and manure, which maintained soil fertility.
Missionaries are still teaching people this today:
….The program also ensures that the innovative farming methods are accessible to the very poorest subsistence farmers. The methods taught do not require plows, expensive tools, or commercial fertilizer. Every single technique taught could be done for free. If a job needed a tool, the teachers learned how to improvise using trash—for example, using a bottle cap or jam can instead of a measuring cup. They learned how to save and store seeds to avoid repeated annual expenses, and memorized recipes for creating homemade compost.
“If you want to reach the heart of God, you have to make a plan for the poor,” the instructors said again and again. By reaching the poor with tangible, relevant skills that will help them better survive and thrive, MTW missionaries and their national partners are not only following God’s commands, they’re revealing the heart of God to their neighbors, building bridges for trust and relational evangelism.
“Jesus fed people; Jesus healed the sick; Jesus addressed physical needs as well as spiritual needs,” Sarah said. “I think that, as the Church, we’re called to do that as well. Food and growing food is something that everyone in the world has in common. That’s why I got into agriculture to begin with, and I think it’s a huge way to get into communities. … Especially for subsistence farmers in African contexts, it’s just so insanely relevant. If you can tie the gospel to planting a seed, to that seed sprouting, to the rain coming, to this thing they spend their entire day, their entire life, doing—how powerful is that?”
Just as an aside, Leftists and Democrats are the ones pushing “institutional racism,” as the below notes. Also note, I use “totalitarianism” in the sense of “total thought.” Which is a forced “homogenization” of thought… or, state instituted/forced “total thought.”
DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — all of which sounds fine, right? But materials put out by the state of California show that in this case, DEI translates to highly contested and controversial views. The state’s definitions say that the idea of “color blindness” “perpetuates… racial inequities,” and even the idea of “merit,” is “embedded in the ideology of Whiteness” and “upholds race-based structural inequality.” FIRE has filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach these politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The regulations are now in effect in the State Center Community College District, and FIRE’s clients have already been forced to change their syllabi and teaching materials, lest they face repercussions. (More info on the lawsuit @FIRE)
Here is an article from THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE that is worth reading in it’s entirety. It is titled: “First Amendment lawsuits challenge state’s DEI rules for community colleges” If you encounter a paywall, grab the URL from the link and put it into this “hopper: REMOVE PAYWALL.
California’s new community college rules sound simple enough: As of this year, all instructors must teach in a way that is culturally inclusive and must prove during employee evaluations that they respect and acknowledge students and colleagues of diverse backgrounds.
But what if an instructor holds so-called color-blind[more on this idea after article excerpt] views and prefers to ignore people’s race, ethnicity, gender or other physical and cultural characteristics as a personal philosophy? Or if an instructor disagrees entirely with the “anti-racism” and “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility lens” that state’s college officials now require?
Seven instructors from four community colleges in the Central Valley are now testing that cultural collision on constitutional grounds, saying their views could get them fired under the new rules. With the backing of national advocacy groups, the instructors are suing state and local college officials in federal court to have the regulations tossed.
The suits echo another federal lawsuit, filed in May against the University of California, in which a psychology professor hoping to work at UC Santa Cruz ran up against a UC requirement that applicants submit a statement supporting “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The applicant likened it to a “modern-day loyalty oath” of the kind discredited in the 1950s, when those who wouldn’t sign might be labeled communist subversives.
[….]
Another group, the Institute for Free Speech, filed a similar lawsuit on July 6 on behalf of Daymon Johnson, a history instructor at Bakersfield College in Kern County.
“Almost everything Professor Johnson teaches violates the new DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) requirements — not just by failing to advance the DEIA and anti-racist ideologies, but also by criticizing them,” the suit says, noting that compliance with the new rules would violate the instructor’s conscience and force him to surrender his academic freedom.
In his U.S. History class this fall, for example, Johnson plans to have students read two books claiming to debunk the historian Howard Zinn’s work, which reveals less flattering versions of the American story, and the well-known 1619 Project, which digs deeply into the foundations of slavery.
His lawsuit contains a long list of things that the instructor “does not wish” to do. These include referring to transgender students by their preferred pronouns, acknowledging that social identities are diverse, and demonstrating “DEI and anti-racism practices” because he “rejects and even finds (them) abhorrent.”
Johnson is also a leader of the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a Bakersfield College group that opposes “political and ideological tyranny.” Its acronym is RIFL.
The suit claims that Johnson is already in the crosshairs of the college administration for his views and quotes a Kern college district trustee saying, in reference to employees holding anti-DEIA views: “They’re in that 5% that we have to continue to cull. Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse.”
The Kern trustees did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit says that Bakersfield College already fired another instructor, who was Johnson’s predecessor at RIFL, and calls him “the first cullee.”
According to the suit, the person who oversaw the firing was the Kern district’s former chancellor, Sonya Christian, who has just become the chancellor of the California community colleges. With 116 schools and more than 2 million students enrolling each year, it’s the nation’s largest higher education system.
On Friday afternoon, state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a response to Johnson’s suit on behalf of Christian, arguing that the instructor has not only failed to show that he’s been harmed by the rules, but because of that, he also lacks standing to complain about them.
The response defends the diversity regulations and says the rules “do not restrict the free speech of any employee,” nor do they infringe on anyone’s academic freedom, “including Johnson’s.”
The system’s Board of Governors has the right to establish policies that “reflect its ideals and principles regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” the state argues.
A spokesperson for Christian said the college system has not yet responded in court to the more recent lawsuit and would not comment on it.
The new regulations require all 73 college districts to develop policies for evaluating employee performance and tenure eligibility in light of their “DEIA competencies.”
The rules follow a series of other DEIA guidance and messages from the chancellor’s office in recent years, and say that to ensure academic success, “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) and anti-racism remain at the heart of our work.”
The college system also posts a glossary of DEIA terms, which defines color blindness as a “racial ideology” that ignores “a large part of one’s identity and lived experience” and therefore “perpetuates existing racial inequities.”….
COLOR BLIND
Dennis Prager discusses a call about a gentleman disagreeing with his statement that he doesn’t see color, and others shouldn’t as well. After the discussion of the previous call, I include the call as well as the lead up to it.
MORE!
LINK to a Facebook video: Dennis Reacts: “I See No Color” Is Racist?” (FACEBOOK)
The Issue Is Values, Not Systemic Racism
Do you let your race, gender, or orientation define you? If you are on the left, everything is perceived through the lens of identity politics. Systemic racism is not the real issue plaguing America—it is our opposing values system. Dennis Prager offers some refreshing insight into how to heal our broken nation.
Should We Be Colorblind?
Nothing reveals the moral confusion of our time more than those who label the term “colorblind” racist. Who would want to see themselves in terms of their skin color? And what does a person’s skin color really say about who they are — their likes, dislikes, values, and so on?
Prager Notes The Left’s Proclivity Towards Racism
A girl is legally kidnapped in Santa Clarita by state authorities. The Left’s dogged emphasis on race, class, gender is destroying families, keeping them in poverty, and utterly failing our country’s motto, “out of many, one.” The Left has dumped out the melting pot and keeps us as divided as ever. This story is maddening!
Here is the what the main battle is over: “A battle over custody of a little girl who is 1/64th Choctaw has been in and out of the courts for three years now, and returns on Friday with a new appeal hearing” (ABC-7).
“Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” — Justice Roberts
Keep in mind the racial science of NAZI Germany were concerned with a 1/16th racial mix… here we see the racial sciences of the Choctaw Nation and the State of California concerned over a 1/64th portion of heritage. Sick! Racist! Leftism!
In 1911, Arkansas passed Act 320 (House Bill 79), also known as the “one-drop rule.” This law had two goals: it made interracial “cohabitation” a felony, and it defined as “Negro” anyone “who has…any negro blood whatever,” thus relegating to second-class citizenship anyone accused of having any African ancestry. Although the law had features unique to Arkansas, it largely reflected nationwide trends. (source)
Five hundred years ago, the Incas sacrificed children.
They removed children as young as six from their families, transported them with great ceremony to a mountain location, and left them to die of exposure.
Did they have the moral right to do it?
Some people think so. “To their credit,” wrote Kim MacQuarrie, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, anthropologist and author, “the Incas did their best to ensure the survival of their people and empire by paying close attention to nature and doing their best to use every means at their disposal, including human sacrifice, to gain control over it.”
There’s something seriously wrong with any kind of reasoning that places human sacrifice in the category of “doing their best.”
And there is something seriously wrong with what happened in Santa Clarita this week to a 6-year-old girl named Lexi and the foster family that has cared for her since she was 2.
Rusty and Summer Page tried for years to adopt Lexi but were blocked from doing so. The reason? The little girl has a tiny bit of Choctaw ancestry — just 1.5 percent — and under federal law the Choctaw Nation can decide her fate. The tribal authorities decided that Lexi will live in Utah with distant relatives. They issued this statement:
“The Choctaw Nation desires the best for this Choctaw child. The tribe’s values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us. Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child.”
This is not human sacrifice, but it is closely related. It is collectivism, the opposite of individual rights.
Collectivism holds that an individual’s life belongs not to the individual, but to the group in which the individual is a member. Where other children would have the right to have a parent or guardian make decisions for them, Lexi’s future has been decided by group leaders seeking to preserve “tribal identity.”
On Monday, in a most disturbing scene, the 6-year-old was pulled weeping and frightened from the arms of her foster father on the driveway of the only stable home she has ever known.
Lexi is not the only child to be victimized by the enforcement of a federal law that, ironically, was intended to prevent children from being removed from their families.
In Arizona, a foster family’s adoption of a baby girl, who was placed with them at birth, is being blocked by the Gila River Indian Community, and the Navajo Nation is standing in the way of foster parents seeking to adopt a 5-year-old boy who has lived with them for four years.
The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank based in Phoenix, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of these children and “others similarly situated” over this “separate and unequal treatment.”
The lawsuit argues that children of Native American ancestry are being unfairly denied their civil rights: “Alone among American children, their adoption and foster care placements are determined not in accord with their best interests but by their ethnicity, as a result of a well-intentioned but profoundly flawed and unconstitutional federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act.”
The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 in reaction to another government program, the Indian Adoption Project, which began in 1958 and continued until 1967.
The Indian Adoption Project was the result of an agreement between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America. It encouraged the removal of Indian children from their families on reservations so they could be adopted and “assimilate” into “mainstream society.” By the 1970s, between 25 and 35 percent of all Indian children nationwide had been removed from their homes, and 90 percent had been adopted by white families.
Outrage over the Indian Adoption Project led to the Indian Child Welfare Act. It requires social workers to make an extra effort to avoid removing Indian children from troubled homes, a greater effort than they would make for non-Indian children. When foster care or adoption becomes necessary, the law requires an active effort to place the child with an Indian family.
The Goldwater Institute says these requirements are discriminatory and harmful, making it harder to protect Indian children from abuse and neglect, and forcing longer waits for permanent homes.
The foster care system has many challenges and many heartbreaking stories. We don’t need laws that cause more pain. The Indian Child Welfare Act should go. Give the kids a break.
Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly.
The parents of a six-year-old girl taken from her family due to her Native American heritage speak out in a statement after officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took their daughter, Lexi, away. Read more at SCV-NEWS.
Opinion | The Brutal Racial Politics Of The Indian Child Welfare Act
Lexi lived four of her first six years with a non-Native American California foster family, but because she is 1/64th Choctaw, tribal officials got her taken from the Californians and sent to live in Utah with a distant relative. On Friday, the Supreme Court will consider whether to hear a challenge to the law that made this possible — the Indian Child Welfare Act, which endangers many young Native Americans. It also is a repudiation of the nation’s premise that rights are inherent in individuals, not groups.
In 1978, before “Native Americans” became the preferred designation for Indians, but when racial “identity” was beginning to become the toxic political concept it now is, Congress enhanced tribal rights. This violated, among other principles, those of federalism: Congress thereby reduced the right of states to enforce laws on child welfare. And it plunged government deeper into making distinctions solely on the basis of biological descent.
The ICWA, an early bow toward multiculturalism, buttressed tribal identities by strengthening tribal rights. For example, tribes can partially nullify states’ powers to intervene against tribal parents’ abuse endangering children. And the ICWA conferred rights on tribes, rights adjudicated in tribal courts, including the right to require Native American children be adopted by Native Americans.
Equal protection of the laws? Not under ICWA.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has asked, “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” Indeed, the primitive concept of racial “blood,” recast as DNA, triggers tribal rights and extinguishes a state’s right to protect many children’s rights. Sometimes with dire consequences.
In 2015, this column acquainted readers with Declan Stewart and Laurynn Whiteshield. Declan was 5 in 2007 when he was beaten to death by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Oklahoma had removed him from his mother’s custody after he suffered a fractured skull and severe bruising between his testicles and rectum. But when the Cherokee Nation objected to his removal, Oklahoma, knowing that the ICWA favors tribal rights, relented. Beaten again, he died a month after returning to his mother.
From the age of 9 months until almost 3, Laurynn was in a North Dakota minister’s foster care. When the minister tried to adopt her, the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe invoked the ICWA, and Laurynn was sent to a reservation and the custody of her grandfather. Less than six weeks later she was dead, having been thrown down an embankment by the grandfather’s wife, who had a record of child abuse.
The ICWA requires that “Indian children” be placed with “Indian” foster families. Because the ICWA allows a child to be yanked from a non-Indian foster home — and from possible adoption — it discourages non-Native American adults from providing care, including early infant attachment, which is a foundation of healthy child development.
Born with fetal alcohol syndrome, Antonio Renova was 3 days old when he was taken from his biological parents, members of the Crow tribe, and put in foster care. Five years later, the biological parents, both on probation following felony convictions (the mother’s included child endangerment), obtained custody of Antonio through a Crow tribal court. He suffered beatings by his parents, who have been charged in his death.
Antonio was a casualty of the ICWA’s form of identity politics — the allocation of legal status and group entitlements based on biology. The ICWA has insinuated into law a “separate but equal” test regarding Native American children in jeopardy. It demotes “the best interests of the child” from the top priority; it makes a child’s relationship with a tribe supremely important.
The nation has abundant reasons to regret its mistreatment of Native Americans, and the ICWA was perhaps motivated by an impulse to show respect for Indigenous cultures. But the cost, in broken bodies and broken constitutional principles, has been exorbitant.
Today, the nation is reverting — in the name of “social justice” and “equity” understood as improved social outcomes for government-favored groups — to a retrograde emphasis on racial identities. So, the ICWA’s sacrifice of individual rights to group entitlements probably has a diminished power to shock. Come Friday, however, the Supreme Court should be shocked into hearing the arguments against the federal government usurpation, through the ICWA, of the states’ responsibility for protecting children in jeopardy, regardless of their biological ancestry.
If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was:
men 343,
women 0.
Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?
Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.
Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Michael Brown blasted officials in Hawaii over their focus on “equity” prior to a deadly wildfire.
The West Maui Land Company accused M. Kaleo Manuel, an official with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), of delaying a response to a request to use water to refill reservoirs used by the Maui Fire Department to fight the wildfire, Hawaii News Now reported.
A video of Manuel discussing the importance of having conversations about “equity” when it came to water use surfaced Thursday.
A state water agency in Hawaii has been accused of delaying the release of water from a traditional farm that landowners reportedly wanted to use to protect their property as the Maui wildfire spread last week.
According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) initially refused a request from West Maui Land, a real estate development company, to provide water to protect properties that were at risk in the area.
Fingers have been pointed at one official in particular, M. Kaleo Manuel, DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management.
According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.
Manuel participates in the Obama Foundation’s Leaders Asia-Pacific program and prioritizes traditional local views on water.
Honolulu Civil Beat quoted Gov. Josh Green (D) as saying that there had been some local opposition in general to using the state’s scarce water resources to fight fires. A state bill to promote the use of state and private reservoirs for fire safety was proposed in 2022 by legislators from Maui, but was not passed….
Here is this “water official” using woke buzzwords like “holistic” — they just string words together to sound important / compassionate:
(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) ….“Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote on X, citing the original article. “A Hawaiian Studies major, Kaleo prefers a traditional, holistic ‘One Water’ approach where water is revered, not used. Water requires ‘true conversations about equity.'”
Kauffman, the CEO of a bitcoin company, included a Zoom interview video of Manuel, posted to YouTube about 10 months ago.
“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god,” Manuel said in the video. “We’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use and not something that we revere. … We can reconnect to that traditional value set.”….
[….]
[….]
What a douche. The LEFTlooks for religion in all the wrong places.
The government would rather blame “climate change” for the Hawaii wildfires than take responsibility for their own reckless disregard.
This event was not the result of climate change, Hurricane Dora, or an extended drought. It resulted from an unusually intense mountain wave/downslope windstorm produced by a fairly rare convergence of conditions. (Cliff Mass Weather Blog)
And Steve Milloy points out another NEW YORK TIMES article that missed an opportunity to zero in on the issue:
And THE BLAZE notes the issue with the power companies
A number of Democrats and other leftists have blamed the deadly wildfires in Hawaii on the specter of anthropogenic climate change. They may be right, but only in a perverted sense.
Like the Biden administration, Hawaii’s Gov. Josh Green (D) and both the state’s 88%-Democratic House and 92%-Democratic state Senate are ostensibly keen to “lead the globe on clean energy and climate issues.”
It appears that the efforts by Hawaii’s largest energy provider to follow suit and satisfy a Democrat-mandated transition to renewable energy took priority over alternatively pragmatic efforts to maintain its equipment and deal with the known and documented threat of fuel buildup in the form of flammable vegetation…..
All these useless policies to make politicians fell good through “messianism” [saving the planet] have consequences. Like all the other policies with a stated outcomes by the Left – they hurt those they purport to want to help.
SAINTHOOD
It reminds me of the stellar [extended] quote by David Mamet:
One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.
But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.
When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.
Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.
A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.
What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.
The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.
One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.
Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.
These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.
[…..]
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro-prietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†
PAGE-NOTE FROM PAGE 154
*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135; 116-117, 122, 151, 154.
Chris Rufo makes some people angry. Why? Because he’s eliminating woke departments at Florida universities, and exposing woke corporate and government trainings. Rufo was once a filmmaker, making documentaries for PBS about things like American poverty. But then his research on poverty connected him with government workers who leaked documents about absurd “woke” training programs. The documents showed that Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights, for example, trained employees to “practice self-talk that affirms … complicity in racism” and to work on “undoing your own whiteness.” Media say Rufo has “invented” a crisis about this kind of thing, and that he’s pushing a “moral panic.” But Rufo has evidence. Watch the video above to see some of it.
Twenty years ago, if you asked someone which of the world’s countries was the most diverse, most equitable and most inclusive, they would have answered “the United States.” Not anymore. What changed? Christian Watson, host of Pensive Politics, has the surprising answer.
