Category Archives: culture

UK’s Good Faith

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…has been slapped down. Great Britain surrendered Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 on the PRC’s promise to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy for 50 years, a promise the PRC made within the context of its one country/two systems framework, a promise made in the UK-PRC Joint Declaration.

The PRC began welching on its word when it began, in no particular order (because commitment timelines mean nothing to the PRC) denying duly elected city legislators their seats, arresting peaceful protestors—including provoking violence to create excuses for the arrests—enacting mainland laws allowing Hong Kongers to be “extradited” to the mainland for what passes for trials in PRC courts.

And now the latest step in the PRC’s reneging.

The “patriots governing Hong Kong” is a resolution that will allow a pro-Beijing panel to approve some candidates that it deems sufficiently “patriotic,” according to the BBC. The vote was 2,895-0, with one abstention[.]

And

Thursday’s near-unanimous vote by the National People’s Congress paves the way for China’s top lawmaking body to revamp as soon as next month how the former British colony picks its leader and legislators. The overhaul will give Beijing much greater control over local elections that were meant to be partly democratic—thanks to an effective veto against candidates deemed unpatriotic.
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The resolution mandates the creation of a commission in Hong Kong that ensures that prospective officeholders conform with criteria laid down in the city’s miniconstitution and national-security legislation.

Nearly unanimous. Nothing untoward, or the least bit odd, about that. Nosirree, Bob. Well, maybe not so odd, coming from a tyranny as it does.

An Interesting Court Fight

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…may be in the offing.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) signed into law a bill that bans all abortions save when the mother’s life is at risk. Even pregnancies resulting from rape or incest are banned from abortion.

The governor also acknowledged the ban is in contradiction of binding precedents of the US Supreme Court, but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law.”

Indeed. Especially since the primary precedent is Roe v Wade, which is, at bottom, a technologically oriented precedent. The Court ruled that States could govern the availability of abortions after the third trimester began—because that was the point at which the fetus became viable outside the womb under the then-extant medical technology.

Today’s medical technology has advanced by orders of magnitude; accordingly, at worst, the Arkansas law provides the Supreme Court the opportunity to adjust its precedent in accordance with modern medical capability, if not to rescind Roe altogether.

Additionally, the ACLU is being its usual cynical self.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas attacked the bill calling it “cruel and unusual[.]”

No, what’s cruel, but sadly entirely too usual, is murdering babies before they’re born.

Censorship

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A collection of Letters in Monday’s Wall Street Journal centered on the Kancel Kulture’s penchant for censorship.

A couple of points regarding that penchant. One letter writer asks,

Why do the canceling elite feel they must protect us from anything that might possibly be upsetting?

The answer is because they assume, since they are so terrified of anything remotely or just potentially a little bit upsetting, and they need desperately to be protected from such, that everyone else must be terrified and so need protection, also.

Another letter writer notes, with reference to censoring Seuss, that

To learn to read is to learn to expand one’s mind and enable critical thinking.

As part of that, those depictions of an earlier age also could be used to illustrate how far we’ve come as a nation. The elitists, the Progressive-Democrats, and the Left generally, however, can’t stand for us to see that progress. It would undermine their narrative.

Social Safety Nets

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The nearly $2 trillion Wuhan Virus “relief” bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, wending its way through Congress on strictly party lines, is being masqueraded as a safety net for folks badly impacted by the Wuhan Virus situation.

Aside from the plain fact that no such bill is needed anymore—our economy is rapidly recovering, and would continue to do so were it not for the Biden administration’s burgeoning reregulation imperative, explosive spending plans, and its impending tax increases—there’s another aspect of this bill.

I’ve written elsewhere about the 91% of spending in this bill that has absolutely nothing to do with the virus. This is about the “safety net” spending. That spending includes items like these:

  • the largest direct stimulus payments ever provided in legislation at $1,400 per adult who filed tax returns with a Social Security number—which is nearly every working, or was working, person. It includes retirees, who lost no income due to the virus, and so they do not need virus stimulus/replacement money
  • expands the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit to the largest amount on record.
    • increases the Child Tax Credit amount to $3,000 per child and $3,600 for children under age six
    • increases the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit in 2021 from $543 to $1,502
  • continues the temporary weekly federal unemployment payments of $300 on top of state jobless benefits
  • recipients will get a tax waiver on $10,200 of unemployment payments. Heretofore, unemployment payments, as income replacement payments, were taxable as ordinary income
  • $86 billion bailout for union-managed multi-employer pension plans and single employer pension plans
  • $27.4 billion for rental and utility payment assistance
  • 15% benefit increase for food stamp recipients
  • reparations—direct payments, to the tune of 120% of outstanding indebtedness, for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers
  • “aid”—bailouts—for State and local governments—every bit as much handout to these political entities as are the above to individuals

All of these are handouts paid to folks who aren’t working and encourage, however weakly, those folks to continue not working and collecting the handouts. They’re not hands up paid to folks who are looking for work, are working temporarily reduced hours, and especially there are no criteria tying the payments to actively seeking work or increased work.

A legitimate social safety net would be a program that offers limited hands up to folks who’ve had a run of bad luck, or who have exercised bad judgment and learned their lesson, or who have misbehaved and mended their ways. Those hands up also would be tied to measurable efforts to find work or increased hours of work.

Giving handouts—especially broadly targeted or altogether untargeted handouts—making them repeatably renewable or outright permanent, and not keying them to working is no safety net. It’s

You’re Not Like Us

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Bion Bartning, Co-founder of Eos Products and Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism President, wrote in Sunday‘s Wall Street Journal of his children’s experience in what used to be (my characterization) a top-drawer private school, New York City’s Riverdale Country School.

The lower-school head had earlier written that “it is essential that parents/caregivers and educators acknowledge racial differences (as opposed to a ‘colorblind’ stance)” and offered reading recommendations such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Families at Riverdale are encouraged to join school-sponsored “affinity” groups to bond with people from their ethnicity or skin color.

Then the Bartnings raised concerns to the school’s administration.

I have always felt a strong connection with Martin Luther King Jr’s dream of an America where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I advocate genuine antiracism, rooted in dignity and humanity. But the ideology underlying the “racial literacy” guide distributed by the school wasn’t like that. Instead of emphasizing our common humanity, it lumps people into simplistic racial groupings. It teaches that each person’s identity and status is based largely on skin color, and leaves no place for people like me, who are of mixed race [he’s an immigrant who’s Mexican/Yaqui and Jewish] or don’t place race at the heart of their identity.

The school master’s response—when it got around to it? It was buried at the end of an email exchange about another matter entirely:

I wonder if this might be a good moment to think whether or not this is the best school for you and your family—being philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned.

[B]eing philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned. That just adds to it. Wrong think demands expulsion of the wrong thinkers.

This is a naked repudiation of our nation’s years of effort toward the equality of opportunity that flows from integration. This is a demand for a return to the racist segregation of the last century. The Left is resuming, in spades, to its racist history.