RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-dangerous-contempt-for-work/

Large numbers of younger American workers, especially Gen Z’ers, those born between 1997 and 2012, are demonstrating some dangerous attitudes about work and employment. The problem isn’t a lack of jobs. Nearly half of small businesses recently reported having unfilled job openings, nearly twice the half-century historical average. And 41% say they have raised compensation. Overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 10 million unfilled jobs at the end of April, followed by 399,000 new jobs in May.

A more likely explanation is changes in mores and attitudes towards work. “Funemployment,” for example, according to Investopedia describes “those who lost their jobs and choose to use their newfound freedom to pursue leisure activities such as traveling, going to the beach, and being physically active until they find a new job.”

Taking one’s time to find a new job while drawing unemployment benefits is nothing new, but usually those who do so are working for cash to increase their income. The “funemployed” are spending money on “leisure activities,” and many live with their parents.

Then there are those who still work but practice “quiet quitting,” basically goldbricking on the job by doing only the bare minimum. Gallup estimates that half of the workforce practices “quiet quitting,” especially Gen Z’ers and younger Millennials. This attitude was facilitated during the Covid years, when the trillions of dollars in federal and state money sloshing through the economy made it affordable to blow off employment or risk one’s job. And don’t forget, during the lockdowns many employees got hooked on working from home, where supervision is lax and goofing off on the company’s dime is easy.

But again, changing attitudes toward work are more pertinent than money when it comes to a lack of respect for honest labor. According to 74% of managers in a Resume Builder survey, Gen Z’ers are “difficult to work with. . . . About half (49%) of [managers] find it difficult to work with Gen Z’ers all (11%) or most of the time (39%). Additionally, 16% say they find it difficult a lot of the time, while 20% say some of the time and 10% say not much of the time. Only 4% said they almost never find it to be difficult.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/08/should-christians-declare-a-state-of-emergency-too/

“Just to be clear, we’re not advocating that Christians declare a state of emergency. Declaring something a “state of emergency” is little more than an attempt to cut off debate and characterize the other side of an issue as an enemy.”

Less than six months after President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which codified gay marriages, the Human Rights Campaign declared its first-ever “state of emergency” for “LGBTQ+ people.”

Why? Because of a supposed spike in “legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year.”

“More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record,” the HRC says.

But look closely. Almost every single bill on the “assault” list is legislation designed to protect children from the omnipresent and increasingly aggressive “transgender” community.

The list includes things such as bans on doctors performing sterilization procedures or prescribing dangerous puberty-blocking drugs to minors. It includes Florida’s ban on public schools teaching children under age 9 about gay sex, and removing books from elementary school libraries that are too pornographic to show on local news programs. It includes protections for girls who don’t want to share lockers with boys (who claim to be girls) or be forced to unfairly compete in sports with physically dominant males. The list includes laws that prevent schools from “transitioning” children behind their parents’ backs.

It’s our guess that most people would view these sorts of measures as reasonable safeguards, not worthy of a “state of emergency” declaration.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-wests-culture-of-therapeutic-individualism

Recent years have been marked by policy failures on crime, homelessness, border control, family support, education, and health care. A major cause is progressives’ ability to transform questions about the best way to reform structures into emotional referendums on individuals. In a therapeutic, interconnected, and individualistic age that prizes feelings and “emotional safety,” making policy debates personal is a winning tactic. Progressives consistently resort to the fallacy of composition to shut down competing arguments.

The fallacy of composition arises when we mistakenly generalize from the part to the whole, or vice-versa. A phone book is hard to tear, but that doesn’t mean that an individual page is. Venezuela is an authoritarian nation, but that doesn’t mean that Venezuelans are. Brazilians tend to be good at soccer, but that doesn’t mean a particular Brazilian necessarily is.

Consider the examples below:

Apart from the first example, all the rest implicate progressive sensibilities, in that a progressive might engage in the fallacy and misconstrue the collective policy proposal as offensive to individuals. We often see this in our public debates, where a normative proposal (as are those in the left-hand column) is regarded, by progressives, as an attack on certain people (the right-hand column). Progressives thus collapse a complex discussion about collective entities into a debate about the treatment of individuals. This stems in part from the moral foundations of cultural progressives, who value equal outcomes and the minimization of harm. Those committing the fallacy of composition prioritize the therapeutic, privileging the psychological feelings of sensitive individuals at the margins above the collective dimensions of social problems to impede rational, democratic solutions. The political becomes the personal.

Public morality has evolved since the mid-1960s to the point where most taboos revolve around racism, sexism, homophobia, and other identitarian versions of the care/harm moral foundation. In short, our moral landscape has tilted in favor of the Left. This permits what the scholar Cass Sunstein terms “opprobrium entrepreneurs” to institutionalize the fallacy of composition on their cardinal issues.

https://www.thepostemail.com/2023/06/05/one-word-at-a-time/

“The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.” So said President Biden at Howard University’s commencement recently. Was he telling a bald-faced lie? At the very least, he was corrupting the language. Herein, a primer on some of the more egregious crimes against clear thought that are currently bedeviling well-meaning Americans. But first a word on precisely what the culture vandals are out to destroy.

The American Way of Life

Despite the best efforts of the neo-Marxists and their collaborators in both parties, America still possesses a distinctive way of life. Those who subscribe to it believe that “governments are instituted among men” to secure the rights of individuals, and that individuals do not exist to serve governments. They believe in the rule of law, equality before the law (as the only sort of equality government should concern itself with), and basic law and order. They believe in freedom of religion, speech, and press and in the right to bear arms. They believe in a person’s right to run his own life and in his obligation to take full responsibility for it. They believe in private property, in earning one’s keep, and in the economic freedom and opportunity afforded by capitalism. They put great stock in science and technology, and they see industrialism as an overwhelmingly beneficial human achievement. They see the family as a fundamental and essential institution, and if they are religious, they are likely Judeo-Christian. Their language is English, and they do not believe that all cultures are created equal.

Diversity

If every American subscribed to the American way of life, it would be a very bad thing, we are told. That’s because diversity is good, they say. Race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual identity–the more ways in which the members of any group of Americans differ from each other, the better. No valid rationale for this conception of diversity has ever been offered. Usually, it is simply asserted, as in this statement from the website of the Boston Foundation, “Diversity is core to what makes cities great.” Diversity thus conceived is always treated as intrinsically and self-evidently beneficial. In truth it is an Orwellian pseudo-concept conjured out of thin air to serve a subversive political agenda. Only a confused, compliant, or deeply cynical mind would accept it at face value.