Tag Archives: culture

What She Said

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The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died last Monday, had some thoughts on morals and society in her 1995 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Liberals and conservatives, radicals and socialists, disagreed about specific policies, but they were agreed on the principle that any measure of relief, for example (or charity, for that matter), had to justify itself by showing that it would promote the moral as well as the material well-being of the recipients….
… This principle stipulated that the condition of the “able-bodied pauper” (it did not apply to the sick, aged or children) be less “eligible”—that is, less desirable, less favorable—than the condition of the independent laborer. And “less-eligibility” meant not only that the pauper receive less by way of relief than the laborer did from his wages, but also that he receive it in such a way as to make pauperism less respectable than work—to “stigmatize” it….
In the past few decades we have deliberately divorced poor relief from moral principles, sanctions or incentives. This reflects in part the theory that society is responsible for all social problems and should therefore assume the task of solving them. …
The divorce of social policy from moral principles—the de-moralization of social policy—also reflects the spirit of relativism that is so pervasive in our time.

Absolutely, what she said. Now we’re at the start of a new year. It’s a good time to set about correcting that moral failure.

RTWT.

Contemptible Average Americans

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It’s well-known that the Left and its political organ, the Progressive-Democratic Party, have nothing but contempt for the rest of us, from the NLMSM referring to Tea Partiers as tea baggers, through Barack Obama’s dismissal of Middle Americans as Bible- and gun-clingers (bitter ones, at that), through Hillary Clinton’s irredeemable and deplorable slur.  We also get House Progressive-Democrats loudly questioning the integrity of House Republicans who don’t agree with them on impeachment.  The list is interminable.

Here’s one of the latest, this one from Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator (D, MA) Elizabeth Warren:

[T]he Republicans in Congress have turned into fawning, spineless defenders of his [President Donald Trump] crimes.

So, because Republicans disagree with her, they’re contemptible.  And—which she knows she’s doing, words being her stock in trade—she’s slandering all of us Americans who support this or that Republican or the Republican Party in general.

Oh, and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden told his New Hampshire audience that there are some really decent Republicans that are out there still.

Right.  Biden harkened back to a “compliment” with which persons of his (and my) generation are well familiar: those Republicans are a credit to their…party.

This is the arrogance of the Left, and the contempt for us average Americans in which the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party politicians hold us.

Remember this in the fall.

Only Progressive-Democrats

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“Iowa nice:” what Iowans have a reputation for doing—being willing to go out of their way to help a struggling neighbor, a visitor, or a stranded motorist.  It’s a practice for which Iowa citizens have a deserved reputation. And so do the citizens of Texas, Utah, all across the South; indeed, in most regions of the US. We Americans, in the main, just try to help each other.

Yet, this, during the runup to the Progressive-Democratic Party primary campaign Iowa caucus:

As [Progressive-]Democratic presidential candidates crisscross this state ahead of the Feb 3 caucuses that start the nomination process, they are trying to balance distinguishing themselves from each other with respecting that Iowa tradition.

Only Progressive-Democrats would consider Iowa nice and candidate distinctions to be competing interests requiring “balance.”

Hmm….

Maybe Build Their Own Connections

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Idaho wants to connect several of its western communities to a renewable energy hub in eastern Oregon, and the green citizens of eastern Oregon agrees with the sentiment.  Just don’t use actual power lines to do the connection.  Brian Kelly, Restoration Director for the Greater Hells Canyon Council in eastern Oregon:

We need to develop more renewable energy, of course, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of damage to our last remaining wild places….

Yep.  Dan Shreve, Head of Global Wind Energy Research at Wood Mackenzie:

Regardless of where you go, there’s always some issues—whether it’s bats, whether it’s birds, whether it’s wealthy landowners who don’t want their view interrupted. As a consequence, you see these initiatives drag on forever.

These worthies put greater value—economic and otherwise—on sights and terrain than they do on actual power to support the folks living there to enjoy those sights and that terrain, as well as telling others elsewhere that local sights and terrain are more important than those others’ access to power.

Perhaps utilities should walk away from such areas, build their hubs and their transmission lines elsewhere, and let these folks who think energy is not all that important develop their own clean power sources and provide their own accesses to them. Surely, they’ll be able to do so much more cheaply and efficiently while preserving their views than can utilities.

“Circle Games” and Losers

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One last thought on this, and then I’ll depart from the foolishness.  Recall the cadets and midshipmen who made the OK sign as part of a so-called circle game and whose academy management teams then were cowed into investigating those cadets and midshipmen.

In the circle game, you try to trick someone into looking at your hand while you make an “OK” sign, usually below the waist. If the mark falls for it, you’re awarded a free punch.

The real losers of the round of the circle game played at the recent Army-Navy college football game are the management teams of the two academies. Their meek surrender to “woke” pressure constitutes their falling for the game’s jape, and so they have earned free punches from each of the cadets and midshipmen who were targets of those managers’ foolish investigations.

“Management teams:” those worthies are unsuited to be leaders of our nation’s military academies, and they are unqualified to be teachers of our future military officers.