Tag Archives: Culture Wars
Bernanke Greets Soldiers
The story of American Empire in one photo:
A Valentine’s Day perspective on Marriage and Household
The degree to which housework is shared is now one of the two most important predictors of a woman’s marital satisfaction. And husbands benefit too, since studies show that women feel more sexually attracted to partners who pitch in. 
(Read more)
Hmmmm….
EU overruling British law – forbidding British deportation of rapists, jihadists
Richard Dawkins celebrates a victory over creationists
Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.
The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. (Read more)
RamzPaul: Tampon Ad Called ‘Transphobic’
Why the Scots want independence from the English
The more life in Scotland feels like life in England, the stronger the desire to assert a distinct identity.
In part, the disengagement of Scotland from the UK reflects the inexorable consequence of the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. It is in the nature of institutions and their members to seek to extend their powers. We see this in Brussels and we see it in Edinburgh. It may still be unlikely that a referendum in Scotland would produce a majority for outright independence, but there will probably be a majority for giving much greater powers to the Scottish Parliament – what is commonly called devo-max. The Union is being sliced up salami-style until the final step to independence is small.
The rise of Scottish nationalism puzzles many in England, especially those who believe that Scotland is subsidised by England (an arguable proposition) and also those millions south of the border who claim Scottish ancestry, often proudly. In truth, it puzzles some of us in Scotland, too, for many are still happy with a dual Scottish-British identity.
Undeniably, however, the sense of Britishness has weakened over the past half-century. There are some conventional, explanations: the distance from the Second World War, when Britain resisted Nazi Germany; the end of the British Empire, in which Scots had played a disproportionate role; and, perhaps, membership of the European Union. Certainly, the SNP fastened on this as a defence against the charge that independence would leave Scotland isolated.
With this weakening of a British identity goes a resurgent Scottishness. Take the kilt, for example. When I was young, it was worn by soldiers, stage comics and singers of Scots songs, public schoolboys on Sundays, and, somewhat unconvincingly, members of the Royal family and lairds attending the Braemar Gathering and other Highland games. It was also favoured by a few cultural nationalists like Compton Mackenzie and Hugh MacDiarmid. Now it is far more popular than it used to be: standard wear for weddings and dances, and international football and rugby matches. It has become an expression of difference, of our distinct identity. (Read more)
Israel to deport Japanese researcher over fear he will ‘settle down’ after studies
More than 300 lecturers and doctoral students sent on Tuesday letters to Israel’s President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar to protest the Immigration Authority’s decision not to extend a foreign student’s visa. In its decision, the Immigration Authority said it feared the student – who asked to extend his visa so he can finish his doctorate, might “strike down roots” in Israel.
Koji Yamashiro finished his B.A. and M.A. in the Department of Jewish Thought in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, and won a presidential scholarship for his doctoral studies. Yamashiro’s research focuses on monotheistic religions. (Read more)
Feminism Is Socialism with Panties?
Never Trust Anyone Who Hasn’t Been Punched in the Face
Conservatives like to talk about the causes of Western Civilization’s downfall: feminism, loose morality, drug abuse, Christianity’s decline, reality TV. Blaming civilization’s downfall on lardy hagfish such as Andrea Dworkin is like a doctor diagnosing senility by an old person’s wrinkles. The fact that anyone listened to such a numskull is a symptom, not the cause, of a culture in decline. The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the original National Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago:
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.
Every great civilization reaches a point of prosperity where it is possible to live your entire life as a pacifist without any serious consequences. Many civilizations have come to the state of devolution represented by modern Berkeley folkways, from wife-swapping to vegetarianism. These ideas don’t come from a hardscrabble existence in contact with nature’s elemental forces; they are the inevitable consequence of being an effete urban twit removed from meaningful contact with reality. (Read more)
What is Cultural Marxism?
This article probably gives too much credit to Marxists, nevertheless:
In his columns on the next conservatism, Paul Weyrich has several times referred to “cultural Marxism.” He asked me, as Free Congress Foundation’s resident historian, to write this column explaining what cultural Marxism is and where it came from. In order to understand what something is, you have to know its history.
Cultural Marxism is a branch of western Marxism, different from the Marxism-Leninism of the old Soviet Union. It is commonly known as “multiculturalism” or, less formally, Political Correctness. From its beginning, the promoters of cultural Marxism have known they could be more effective if they concealed the Marxist nature of their work, hence the use of terms such as “multiculturalism.”
Cultural Marxism began not in the 1960s but in 1919, immediately after World War I. Marxist theory had predicted that in the event of a big European war, the working class all over Europe would rise up to overthrow capitalism and create communism. But when war came in 1914, that did not happen. When it finally did happen in Russia in 1917, workers in other European countries did not support it. What had gone wrong?
Independently, two Marxist theorists, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and Georg Lukacs in Hungary, came to the same answer: Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to its true, Marxist class interest that Communism was impossible in the West until both could be destroyed. In 1919, Lukacs asked, “Who will save us from Western civilization?” (Read more)
UNESCO: Its purpose and Its Philosophy
There’s a lot of one-world vision swirling around UNESCO. Here is an extensive list of quotes.
America’s New Racists by Walter E. Williams
I recall my cousin’s and my being chased out of Fishtown and Grays Ferry, two predominantly Irish Philadelphia neighborhoods, in the 1940s, not stopping until we reached a predominantly black North or South Philly neighborhood.
Today all that has changed. Most racist assaults are committed by blacks. What’s worse is there’re blacks, still alive, who lived through the times of lynching, Jim Crow laws and open racism who remain silent in the face of it.
Last year, four black Skidmore College students yelled racial slurs while they beat up a white man because he was dining with a black man. Skidmore College’s first response was to offer counseling to one of the black students charged with the crime. In 2009, a black Columbia University professor assaulted a white woman during a heated argument about race relations. According to interviews and court records obtained and reported by Denver’s ABC affiliate (12/4/2009), black gangs roamed downtown Denver verbally venting their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave. Earlier this year, two black girls beat a white girl at a McDonald’s, and the victim suffered a seizure. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered an emergency shutdown of the beaches in Chicago because mobs of blacks were terrorizing families. According to the NBC affiliate there (6/8/2011), a gang of black teens stormed a city bus, attacked white victims and ran off with their belongings.
Racist black attacks are not only against whites but also against Asians. In San Francisco, five blacks beat an 83-year-old Chinese man to death. They threw a 57-year-old woman off a train platform. Two black Oakland teenagers assaulted a 59-year-old Chinese man; the punching knocked him to the ground, killing him. At Philly’s South Philadelphia High School, Asian students report that black students routinely pelt them with food and beat, punch and kick them in school hallways and bathrooms as they hurl racial epithets such as “Hey, Chinese!” and “Yo, Dragon Ball!” The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund charged the School District of Philadelphia with “deliberate indifference” toward black victimization of Asian students.
In many of these brutal attacks, the news media make no mention of the race of the perpetrators. If it were white racist gangs randomly attacking blacks, the mainstream media would have no hesitation reporting the race of the perps. Editors for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune admitted to deliberately censoring information about black crime for political reasons. Chicago Tribune Editor Gerould Kern recently said that the paper’s reason for censorship was to “guard against subjecting an entire group of people to suspicion.”
These racist attacks can, at least in part, be attributed to the black elite, who have a vested interest in racial paranoia. And that includes a president who has spent years aligned with people who have promoted racial grievance and polarization and appointed an attorney general who’s accused us of being “a nation of cowards” on matters of race and has refused to prosecute black thugs who gathered at a Philadelphia voting site in blatant violation of federal voter intimidation laws. Tragically, black youngsters – who are seething with resentments, refusing to accept educational and other opportunities unknown to blacks yesteryear – will turn out to be the larger victims in the long run. (Read more)
Avoid white paper to prevent racism in nuseries, expert says
Dress witches in pink and avoid white paper to prevent racism in nuseries, expert says
Teachers should censor the toy box to replace witches’ black hats with a pink ones and dress fairies in darker shades, according to a consultant who has issued advice to local authorities.
From the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz to Meg, the good witch from the Meg and Mog children’s books, witches have always dressed in black.
But their traditional attire has now come in for criticism from equality experts who claim it could send a negative message to toddlers in nursery and lead to racism.
Instead, teachers should censor the toy box and replace the pointy black hat with a pink one, while dressing fairies, generally resplendent in pale pastels, in darker shades.
Another staple of the classroom – white paper – has also been questioned by Anne O’Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity.
Children should be provided with paper other than white to drawn on and paints and crayons should come in “the full range of flesh tones”, reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.
Finally, staff should be prepared to be economical with the truth when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer “black” or “brown”.
The measures, outlined in a series of guides in Nursery World magazine, are aimed at avoiding racial bias in toddlers as young as two. (Read more)
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