Lego’s mistake was to release a toy model that looks a bit like a building in a Muslim country. Don’t laugh: I’m sure this is how Nazism started.
Lego has announced that it’s pulling its infamous Jabba the Hutt-themed play set and insists that the toy has simply come to the end of its run. But Birol Kilic, head of the Turkish Cultural Association of Austria, is claiming glorious victory after a long campaign that accused Lego of fanning the flames of racism. Kilic says that Hutt’s palace looks eerily similar to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and that because Jabba is a villain this will reinforce negative attitudes towards Muslims. (Read more)
This is Leon Trotsky’s 1930 work, “The History of the Russian Revolution”, from which shown above is a passage. The last word in that passage is “раÑиÑтов”, whose Latin transliteration is “racistov”, i.e., “racists”. This work here is the first time in history one will ever find that word.
My more doubtful readers may check the internet, the microfiche and microfilm at the local library, as well as the numerous books arrayed along the shelves there, but they shall never find an earlier usage of the word “racist” than Trotsky’s coinage of the word here.
So the next logical question is what was Leon Trotsky’s purpose in inventing this word? To find out, let us look at a full English translation of the paragraph we looked at before.
“Slavophilism, the messianism of backwardness, has based its philosophy upon the assumption that the Russian people and their church are democratic through and through, whereas official Russia is a German bureaucracy imposed upon them by Peter the Great. Mark remarked upon this theme: “In the same way the Teutonic jackasses blamed the despotism of Frederick the Second upon the French, as though backward slaves were not always in need of civilised slaves to train them.” This brief comment completely finishes off not only the old philosophy of the Slavophiles, but also the latest revelations of the ‘racists.'”
The Slavophiles which Trotsky alluded to were historically a group of traditionalist Slavs who valued greatly their native culture and way of life, and wanted to protect it. Trotsky on the other hand saw them and others like them as an impedement to his internationalist communist plans for the world. (Read more)
It’s not exactly news that China is setting itself up as a new global superpower, is it? While Western civilization chokes on its own gluttony like a latter-day Marlon Brando, China continues to buy up American debt and lock away the world’s natural resources. But now, not content to simply laugh and make jerk-off signs as they pass us on the geopolitical highway, they’ve also developed a state-endorsed genetic-engineering project.
At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation’s intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. (Read more)
Five Muslim extremists attacked a gay club in Paris beating the bouncers and spraying some attendants, including the vice president of IDAHO, with tear gas (Read more)
Liberals (like Marxists) love to claim science is on their side. In the US, they deride Conservatives for having less faith in science. Interestingly, in Europe and Japan, it’s the left who is more skeptical of science. It all depends on whose sacred cows are threatened by the men in white lab coats.
Curt Doolittle: But any idiot who thinks that (a) formal institutions don’t matter -libertarians or (b) that formal institutions are sufficient – progressives, will have history prove him wrong to the chagrin of the people (c) who understand that norms are a form of property (conservatives).
* Bigger income gap between East / West Europeans, than Black / White Americans.
* Hispanic Household Income > Black Household Income, but Hispanic Individual Income < Black Individual Income. (Hint: Hispanic families are larger.)
* Black families more harmed by welfare than slavery.
* Racism is NOT discrimination.
***
The Vulgar Pride of Intellectuals
* “At the heart of the social vision prevalent among contemporary intellectuals is the belief that there are ‘problems’ . . . and ‘solutions’ . . .”
* “There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have planed a larger role in history than the era in which we live.”
* “Intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.”
* Acknowledging that wealth is created (instead of arguing over its distribution) would devestate intellectuals’ world view.
* “[Although intellectuals pay a lot of attentions to inequality among racial groups], seldom . . . has this attention been directed . . . toward how the less economically successfull . . . might improve themselves by availing themselves of the culture of others around them.”
(For example, Scots embraced English language and culture to their great benefit in the mid 19th century.)
* “Black unemployment rates were lower than that of whites as long ago as 1890.”
* Minimum wage laws have wreaked havoc upon black employment.
* “Sweeping claims for the benefits of . . . diversity in innumerable institutions . . . have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given.”
* “At the same time you’re getting all this mouthing of diversity, there’s an extremely narrow ideological conformity that’s being enforced.”
* “In Chicago (unlike Harvard), economics was a full contact sport.” (HA!)
* “I was a Marxist when I went into Milton Friedman’s course. I was a Marxist when I came out. . . . [and then] I went to work for the government . . . . I realized other people’s well being would never be the priority of politicians and bureaucrats.”
* “The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees.”
* “I love the use [Obama’s] of the word opportunity. You know, I had just as much opportunity as Michael Jordan to become an NBA star. It just so happened that there was some difference in skill.”
***
The Difference Between Liberal and Conservative
Liberal premise: There is nothing in human nature that would cause us to be unhappy. It’s the fact that we have the wrong institutions.
Conservative premise: Man is flawed from day one and there are no solutions, only trade offs.
Most liberal ideas can be destroyed by three questions:
1. Compared to what?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?
Lego’s mistake was to release a toy model that looks a bit like a building in a Muslim country. Don’t laugh: I’m sure this is how Nazism started.
(Read more)