Can you have a healthy democracy without a common set of facts?

“A popular government,” wrote James Madison in 1822, “without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.” Were Thomas Jefferson offered a choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without a government, he said that he would choose the press (though that is probably going a bit far).

As the turmoil at America’s elite universities over antisemitism shows, creating a political culture in which people can argue constructively, disagree and compromise is not something that happens spontaneously. (The Economist)

Universities as places of critical thinking are but places in memory. When universities support exclusive lounges for black students and exclude whites from said lounges purportedly in the name of promoting inclusivity, the disconnect is so obvious as to defy belief! This is not a bullshit story but is actually happening at a Canadian university, Queen’s in Kingston. 

The turmoil referred to in the aforementioned quote about American universities is applicable also in Canadian universities. How can students “argue constructively, disagree and compromise” when they are barred from interacting? University professors must file a DIE declaration (diversity, inclusivity and equality I think) with any request for project funding. Another words, demonstrate how you are another lemming in the lineup of woke culture sycophants before we even consider your request, no matter how important or innovative your project proposal. We will stop progress and demand compliance. A “common set of facts” is no longer something to rely on, when those “facts” mean exclusion of awkward and uncomfortable truths. Mad!

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Should kindergarten kids be receiving gender identity instruction in school?

In March 2022 Ron DeSantis (governor of Florida and soon-to-be announced Presidential candidate) signed the officially titled “Parental Rights in Education” bill. It barred instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation issues in kindergarten to third-grade classes, spanning the ages of about five to nine.

Now I’m not a big fan of DeSantis and the really conservative Republican party. But I would not cross the street to avoid contact with him either. The guy has some damn fine ideas, especially on how to temper the ‘woke’ movement and its attempt at reforming our cultural and societal landscape. Whoever came up with the idea of teaching gender identity and sexual orientation to kindergarten children should be banned from any public policy job. Seriously! At an age when kids should be kids; ie: playing with dolls and building blocks, there is an increasingly spreading movement to inculcate these toddlers with concepts of sexual identity? We berate Putin’s dictatorial propaganda in Russia. How is teaching sexual identity to 5 year olds anything else but similar mind messing propaganda? It’s a mad, mad world!

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Ian Fleming’s James Bond masterpieces to be ‘woke’ rewritten

Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are to be reissued with a number of racial references removed and a disclaimer that the books might use terms of attitudes “considered offensive by modern readers”. Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which owns the rights to the author’s work, employed sensitivity readers to look at the texts and make recommendations for changes. The changes include the removal of the N-word in almost all cases, and omitting references to the ethnicity of a number of minor characters. Another change comes in a scene where Bond visits a nightclub in Harlem, and a reference to the “audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough” has been changed to “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room”. (Sarah Shaffi)

What the F..k!! The cancel culture and woke world we live in makes me reconsider the abhorrence I’ve felt toward alt-right and ‘stars and bars’ subcultures. It is no wonder these extremist groups exist. This is patently absurd. Is this the future for all writers submitting anything for publication anymore? Sensitivity readers!?! Is all creative writing to now be subject to sensitivity censorship? Maddening! Thank God for blogs! I will continue to write without censors and invite all by subscribers to submit commentary. I’ll be the ultimate arbiter of what is offensive. Write what you want. Read what you want. But don’t rewrite history! Seriously. What is offensive about the phrase “panting and grunting like pigs at the trough”? Is this offensive to pigs?

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russian society completely militarized

There can be no doubting the complete militarization of russian society is well underway. I would have said culture in reference to most states, but that concept no longer exists in war criminal Putin’s gangster state. Even russian vodka is now bottled to look like munitions. Truly tragic how far this once proud nation has fallen into a hell hole. Pray that 2023 sees an even firmer resolve from free nations in their support for Ukraine and their shunning of the gangsters who rule russia. #SlavaUkrainii

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Why are older men scorned when dancing?

Phil Hilton examines the societal negativity suffered by older men who still love to dance. Improvised bobbing and bouncing to a beat feels unlike any other movement. You are lost in a flow-like state. According to Dr Peter Lovatt, author of The Dance Cure, dancing allows the mind release from day-to-day concerns and interrupts negative looping thoughts.….At each of these life stages, I remember the feeling of being utterly at peace as I moved. Catching an eye and looking away, at one with the people on the floor but also in my own place of bliss.
And then it stopped.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/22/im-an-older-man-and-i-love-to-dance-whats-wrong-with-that

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When designers don’t understand the social importance of sauna!

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Will the west eventually succumb to Muslims?

Time for a few snippets from my latest read ‘America Alone’ by Mark Steyn. Granted, Steyn is an avowed right wing conservative hawk. But he does make some astute observations about the decline of the west. His principal thrust provides that simple demographics will be the end of western culture. He presents statistics which purport to support (weird word usage, but cool!) that we, as in Caucasian Christians, will succumb to Islam eventually, because of our multicultural open societies and our inability to breed at a rate which Muslim societies and their emigrants to the west bring into the welcoming west. Basically, if a Caucasian couple has 1.2 children and a Muslim couple has 4.5 kids, well….. do the math. This book was written in the ‘circle the wagons’ hysteria following 9/11 so take that into consideration as you read these quotes. Anyways, here are the snippets that caught my eye.

That’s why the Church of England and the Episcopal Church and the Congregational Church and the United Church of Canada and many others are sinking beneath the bog of their own relativist mush, while Islam is the West’s fastest growing religion. There’s no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.

If you believe a nation is the collective, accumulated wisdom of a shared past, then a dependence on immigration alone for population replenishment will leave you lost and diminished.

Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it’s a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. “Atheistic humanism” became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today’s European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be post-European.

Even if a Muslim wanted to, how would he assimilate with, say, Canadian national identity? You can’t assimilate with a nullity, which is what the modern multicultural state boils down to. It’s much easier to dismantle a society than to put anything new and lasting in its place. And across much of the developed world that’s what’s going on right now. Multiculturalism makes a nation no more than a holding pen. In the absence of cultural confidence, demography will decide the future.

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Another gem from ‘The Survival of Culture’; essays reflecting on the direction of society.

The modern diversity exemplified by governments forcing various institutions to include women, ethnic groups, the disabled, those with different sexual preferences, etc., in their membership is, of course, a semantic swindle. It is simply homogeneity by government diktat. A Dickensian world of genuine diversity has been replaced by blandness. One cause of the blandness is to be found in the fact that individuals, by detaching themselves from rootedness in particular traditions, now exhibit many of the features and experiences that previously were scattered over many individuals. What we are dealing with is a new semi-individualized diversity that is glib, facile, and inevitably shallow. (Kenneth Minogue ‘The New Epicureans’)

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Another gem from Douglas Murray’s ‘The Madness of Crowds’.

So here is the first conundrum of the current presumption on the position of women as opposed to men in our societies. Women are exactly the same as men – as capable, as able, as suited to the same array of tasks. And also better. Exactly how this is the case is ill defined because it is ill thought through. Nevertheless we have decided to embed precisely such ill-thinking as deep into our societies as we can possibly manage.

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The disappearance of private language

I’m currently reading ‘The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity’ by Douglas Murray. Murray examines the new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality. Here’s a snippet.

There is little doubt now, after the initial excitement, that we all massively underestimated what the internet and social media would to to our societies. Among the many things that was not foreseen but can now be recognized is that the internet, and social media in particular, have eradicated the space that used to exist between public and private language. Social media turns out to be a superlative way to embed new dogmas and crush contrary opinion just when you needed to listen to them most.

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