RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/09/civility-is-wasted-on-the-left/

Like Jordan Peterson’s reputation, Lionel Shriver’s conservative credentials were burnished by leftist idiocy. In Peterson’s case it was his interview on the UK’s Channel 4 by Cathy Newman. In Shriver’s case it was Yassmin Abdel-Magied walking out of the Brisbane Writers’ Festival in 2016 in protest at Shriver’s views on identity politics and cultural appropriation.

Neither Peterson nor Shriver are my kind of conservatives and, to be fair, I am sure they would not claim to be or would want to be. That’s fine. What I would like to say is that conservative warriors are now needed more than ever. Much less useful are prominent notables on the conservative side who come over all reasonable in the face of those intent on our destruction.

Peterson lost his standing with me when he suggested that Brett Kavanagh should first win his confirmation to the Supreme Court but then immediately resign to clear his name. That was a ridiculous suggestion, to put it extremely mildly. Clearly Peterson has no idea about the enemy we face.

I caught Shriver on Q&A last week. True, I could only stand five minutes or so before turning it off. Any longer spent watching Q&A is injurious to my peace of mind. Nevertheless, I saw enough to sense that Shriver was trying hard to appear “reasonable” to other panellists and to the usual green-leftist ABC audience. Hint for Shriver: Prostration is pointless. They’ll always despise you. Look to, say, Michelle Malkin for a role model.

Did I get a false impression of Shriver’s demeanour? I think not. The following evening I attended the Bonython Lecture in Sydney, where she explained that her engagement, front and backstage, with other Q&A panellists was civil; and, furthermore, she made a point of extolling the need for civility generally in political debate.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

There is so much in today’s news that is both silly and dangerous. The anti-democratic crowd in Britain, like their brethren in the United States, chose not to accept the outcome of an election. The vote three years ago was definitive, with 52% of the electorate voting to leave the European Union. For those of you who speak and write of the closeness of the vote, yes it was. Nevertheless, it was the will of the people. In the same vein there has been a refusal by many on the left in the U.S. not to accept the outcome of our 2016 election. We have corporate leaders who feel it is more important to be “woke” than to accept the reality that a corporation’s most important goal must be profitability. If a business is not profitable, employees, the community, suppliers and customers will not benefit. It seems the entire field of Democrats who would be President have chosen to end fracking and exit the fossil fuel industry – including natural gas, the commodity that has allowed us to come closer to global emission standards than any other industrial nation – and move quickly to renewables like wind and solar, no matter the costs or the effect on the environment. We have big-city politicians – the most prominent example being New York City – who would dumb-down public education to the lowest common denominator, in the name of equality. They would do so to the detriment of minorities and the impoverished, while sending their own children to private institutions.

The common thread running through all these tantrums posing as policies is hypocrisy. It is enough to make an old man wince. But, enough, on to the main message:

Slavery is barbaric, but to argue that it was the “foundation” on which our country was built is hyperbole and disingenuous. In 1619, Virginia was a colony of Britain. It would be 157 years before the American colonies revolted, and they did so to be free and independent. In that year 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” words, as we know, that did not capture the truth of slavery, but which suggested a road map for the banning of international slave trade, which was done in 1808; the freeing of slaves in 1863 under the Proclamation Emancipation, and for the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965. One might argue that 188 years is too long, but keep in mind slavery has been in existence since before written history. Also, remember, in 1776 slavery existed in all thirteen colonies and throughout Europe. And it persists today, enslaving forty million people, particularly in Asia, Africa and Central Asia.