A retrospective from the outlying political wilderness — where in my estimation is home these days to many of the cool cats unafraid of PC police intimidation or decorous poseurs playing the role of “conservative” in an Ionesco play about politics. But then, I’m biased, having been out here for a while myself, at once bemused and saddened by what has become a surreal form of supposedly adversarial politics.
As Blake noted in his email tip, My Derbyshire has a bit of the old OUTLAW in him.
— Which trait predictably these days leads to shunning, should the unsanctioned sentiments expressed be truly transgressive and resistant to the raging anti-intellectualism posing as sophistication that defines our public debate — and not just the showy, almost perfunctory temporary outrage from pragmatic GOP opinion leaders followed almost dutifully by a return to the status quo, where they agree to play the left’s game by the left’s rules, and as a consequence, lose more slowly, willfully.
I could have told him that had he bothered to ask. But then, it’s like Road Warrior country out here, and we don’t stop to talk to a lot of strangers.
There’s a lot of scary, scary fear scaring those who are susceptible to the mind-numbness that is political correctness…
I dream of a day in which I can hold my son above my head while he munches on his government salad, and, as we watch the diversity parade (only six hours long), tell him, “You see son, I’m proud to say I lost to that slowly, and with dignity. Now here’s a billion dollars. Buy yourself a lite ranch dressing packet for your salad.”
You think your superiors in government is going to trust you to actually raise their taxdrones?
optimist
I read Derb’s article when it was origianlly published and again the other day.
Someone point out where he is factually wrong, please.
Lowry? Could you help here?
Haha! What can I say, Ernst. I believe in my Constitutional right to visitation hours for my taxdrone.
It doesn’t matter that you tell the truth, leigh, when that truth is deemed unhelpful…
Unhelpful or not, Squid, I’ll not stand idly by while Eric Holder calls me a coward.
I say the burden of proving Derb wrong is on the alarmists. Derb has citations! lots of them, too.
Show us whatcha got, Holder. Ya fuckin’ coward.
“We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation—anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature.”
“Show us whatcha got, Holder.”
We already know what Holder’s got, albeit an absence rather than a substantial position (he simply ignores the Declaration), it isn’t difficult to identify. Once he plops that down, there’s really nowhere to go with him.
Ernst, I actually just re-read 1984 last week. Orwell was ahead of his time – but not by much. And look at how many of his terms are in use today : Big Brother, MiniTru, doubleplusungood.
It should be remedial reading for high school graduates, but I fear it has become an instruction manual for our political betters.
CAPA teacher’s street attack caught by surveillance cameras
His own fault for not getting to know them as people first, nr. Critics of Derbyshire told me so. While they were burning him to make room for their Todd Akin pyre.
And people will continue to spin excuses and justifications for the barbarians in our midst, and even if the cops catch these kids, no justice will be done. How long ’til the last remnants of trust in the government evaporate? How long ’til vigilantism breaks out? The latest Dark Knight movie was filmed in the ‘Burgh, y’know…
People keep insisting that the “Bonfires of the Vanities” days are long gone in NYC, as well.
I say, not so fast there, hipster.
““You see son, I’m proud to say I lost to that slowly, and with dignity. Now here’s a billion dollars. Buy yourself a lite ranch dressing packet for your salad.””
But Daddy we’re only allowed two per week and I already swiped my card twice. They say they want to protect my liver and thyroid daddy. I don’t want to go to health camp jail again. The animatronic Slim Goodbody robots terrify me. Sparks should not jump out of your rib cage while you dance and sing about healthy eating and exercise!
I haven’t read the original article for six months (happy 1/2 anniversary!), but I remember my hang up was his assertion that American “blacks” are less intelligent, my objection starting with how he’s even quantifying “blacks”. Seems to be a pretty diverse bunch of people to me (for example, our “black” president has a white mother)
It was my strong identification with individuality that was offended, not my feelings about any race in particular. In other words, it was his playing the identity group bullshit politics game, not racism, that I found off-putting.
I think I was told it was supposed satirical, but I thought it pretty pathetic satire if so.
Having said that, it was a travesty he was fired from NRO, and this article linked in the post was very interesting, and less offensive, in that he recognized variables in environment instead of only noting heritage.
He’s pulling much of the information that he’s using from “The Bell Curve”, a very long and difficult book about the relationship between IQ and race. The guy writes books about mathematics, it’s natural for him to go to the numbers.
The book corrects for income, family structure, schooling, rural vs. city dwelling, &c. It all boils down to the uncomfortable and undeniable fact that what Derbyshire is stating in his piece is true. Naturally, we like to think that it is not, but that is not the case.
Blacks refer to themselves as black, so no need to scare quote. We are referred to as white, after all.
If you have ever seen or listened to Chris Rock, he makes many of the same observations as Derb, although he gets a pass for doing so. So his YouTube piece “How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police” and others.
So=see
Well, to quote the fabulous Steven Tyler:
if you can tell a wise man
by the color of his skin
mister,
you’re a better man than me…
I’m living on the edge.
Actually, it’s:
If you can judge a wise man
by the color of his skin
mister,
You’re a better man than I
Like I said leigh, our “black” president has a white mother. “Black” got scare quotes because my point is, it’s a pretty damn subjective term.
If I remember, Jewish people fared best in the book. Yet as an American voting block, they mostly voted for Obama. What do I do with that?
Rhetorical question. I look at people as individuals.
Jews and Asians skew upper 5% as groups, so individuality is always the best way to measure intellegence.
That said, there are a boatload of people in the US, so it is sampling for the sake of time and convenience.
Sort of like polling.
Re: the prez being black. He self-refererences himself as black. It’s sort of a double reverse one-drop rule.
Here is what I would have said earlier( October 9, 2012 at 10:21 pm) if I was a smarter person: