… asks Jonah Goldberg.
Last week, we debated whether it was socially acceptable (i.e., is it “racist”?) to use the word “thug” for people exhibiting thuggish behavior. It was a pathetic debate given that we could strike the word from our vocabulary tomorrow and it would A) not improve the plight of the inner-city poor one iota B) within minutes we’d find a new word to replace “thug” to describe goons, gangsters cads, ruffians, bandits and bullies and C) it was clear that people wanted to debate “thug” so they didn’t have to debate the causes of thuggishness. […]
This sort of condescension would be instantly recognizable as itself racist if it were not for the good intentions and self-regard of the people displaying it. Still, it’s deadly. I got this email from a reader who liked my column (they exist too):
Hi Jonah, I enjoyed reading your culture column. It all makes a lot of sense. I work at a community college. I’m not on the faculty (thank God for that!), but I do know a lot of faculty. I heard something very disturbing yesterday. One of our faculty who teaches Composition I and II will not grade on grammar. She thinks that’s immoral. You see, correctly written and spoken English is the language of the rich and powerful. I’m not sure where the argument goes from there. It makes no sense to me. If I’m sending a teen off to Japan to make their way in that society, would I send them there with no knowledge of the language or the broader cultural differences? How are any of these students supposed to be upwardly mobile if they’re not fluent in the “language of the rich and powerful?” I just can’t believe it – grammar is a social justice issue. It doesn’t help that a lot of what I do is editing. The things I have to correct in faculty submissions… oy. Anyway — thanks for another great read! [Name withheld]
There was a time when it was understood that the best favor you do for the under-privileged was to get them to a place where they could compete with the privileged. I’m sure this Composition teacher thinks she’s doing that. But she’s not. While it may be true that the poor kid with bad grammar and the “privileged” kid with good grammar (I use quotation marks because I don’t see community colleges as hotbeds of privilege of any sort) will get the same grades in her class, the kid with good grammar will be far better prepared for life beyond college. What may feel like compassion in the classroom is actually cowardice; the teacher is afraid to hurt the feelings of kids who, at some level, may need to have their feelings hurt if that’s the price of a good education. The notion that we help the under-privileged by leveling away distinctions between good grammar and bad grammar — or thuggishness and non-thuggishness — is quite simply an argument for dismantling civilization.
That it is. But Goldberg and others need to have an “Aha” moment …
Nothing, NOTHING is wrong with these people. They are totalitarian wannabes; neo-feudalists who feel they should be in charge of Other People’s Lives. They do not want, desire, love, respect or in any way want Western Civilization to survive. If they can’t bring about the fall by means of violence, they will do it by means of cultural cancer.
The first step to opposing these people is to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt that they don’t know what they are talking about.
They do.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
I saw that Martin McPhillips / Malone Vandam’s New Paltz Journal blog is active again, and he notices the same thing about Victor Davis Hanson. Referring to the current administration as Obama’s Chicago Presidency and its head as a romantic revolutionary, VDH is getting warmer, but — six years in — he STILL isn’t willing to state outright what was obvious from Obama’s relationships with Wright and Ayers.
A big problem is, you sound like a lunatic conspiracy nut if you don’t modulate your view on the left, but it’s long since been impossible to attribute good faith to the Jacobins AND DO SO IN GOOD FAITH.
Goldberg particularly doesn’t have an excuse in light of the book that gave him such a high profile, but it’s almost as if he didn’t really believe the evidence and arguments behind Liberal Fascism: it’s the last time he’s been willing and able to be truly provocative, and now that he’s on the cable talk-show circuit, he has no reason to really ruffle feathers.
[…] Rush Limbaugh: Obamas want to divide instead of inspire… Wombat: Joe for America: Michelle claims museums are only for white people and Libraries are good too Jonah Goldberg: Progressives love anti religious art, provided it’s anti Christian Lem’s Place: Michelle Obama goes to the museum… Darleen Click/Protein Wisdom: What is wrong with these people? […]
Funny, but to me that second sentence is a dead solid perfect description of something wrong with them.
I’ve been in the position of having to backstop and handhold for people who don’t genuinely need it but somehow manage to require it anyway. Anyone who wants that job has got to be out of his cotton-picking mind.
Never mind the psycho who wants to backstop and handhold the entire scenic San Ju-an you-drive-em human race, from cradle to grave.
I am not sure how much actual intelligence is involved. More like a parasitic plant chocking its host.
I could accept this is an intentional conspiracy to bring down the American way of life. At minimum it is a drive to expand the number of government employees since that is how this bunch measures their success and increases their constituency.
People who describe themselves as well-intentioned are not necessarily well-intentioned. There is this not-so-rare phenomenon called “lying.”
As a matter of apparent fact (as I do not read minds), some of these people are even lying to themselves. I have spent time with some people raised to detest everything Western, and they often speak of their good intentions, in between condemnation, calumny, death wishes and fantasies of mass executions.
The really scary part is how apparently rational, kind, and decent they can be until one of their trigger topics comes up. That does imply there’s something not entirely normal going on there.
People behave in their own self interest. Conservatives recognize this and plan accordingly. Liberal Progressives are either are unaware of the simple fact or do their best to deny it.
Don’t like your cultural cancer? Then read the great books seriously with others with a view to learning from them, and urge that rather than breaking into pharmacies to loot, pillage and burn, inner-city people do the same.
Whoever may say that people ought not read and study the great books of the western canon would deny anyone the greatest riches men have ever found. These pieces-of-shit have banished the highest treasures of the mind from those who need them most.
assholes. dumbasses.
Ignore the naysayers. Just read and learn.
McGehee
We think something is “wrong” with them because we make assumptions that adult human beings being at least nominally rational and, therefore, at least recognize what is in their self-interest.
But they are not “wrong” in the sense they recognize themselves as human, but not most other people. They are following their own logic based on that assumption.
sdferr, it is like when their is a complaint that IQ an aptitude test are biased toward “white” people. Hell yes they are biased, they measure what is successful in the present society. You have to fit that norm or most likely fail.
Don’t like it? You have my condolences, thank you for playing, here is a home edition of the game of life.
One among many of the great pleasures dwelling with writers of the canon is that there aren’t any white people or black people or yellow people or red people anywhere to be found. For thousands of years there were just people known by their names. And no IQ tests. Just a contest of good ideas or better ones — used to be called a search for the truth. Weird, right? Still, imagine the shock when the empty-headed louts today discover those pleasures for themselves. Won’t that be a happy day.
Two parts to this post.
The first is the “grammar is a sign of privilege” part which deserves two thousand words on its own. I know vicariously through my spouse, teaching an English Composition course in a community college is not unlike battlefield triage. Where does one begin. The course is about writing essays; most community college students cannot write sentences. And consider, most community college English instructors are low-paid adjuncts who will lose their jobs if they flunk too many students. The immorality is not privilege; the immorality is taking these students’ borrowed-from-taxpayers’ money with the snake-oil pitch that they’ll get a meaningful college degree. And that problem rests completely with the Left.
As for the second part, I’ve come to the conclusion that mere stupidity cannot explain the goings-on in our country. Every nook and cranny of our national heritage and culture is being systematically destroyed. We are being “punished” for imaginary sins in the hope that the “punishers” will obtain some sort of salvation on the misery of the rest of us.
God help us.
Andreas Lubitz
and that’s that.
In every instance, it boils down to respect and tolerance being a one-way street. Mainstream middle America is expected to tolerate and excuse inner-city protests that turn predictably violent; the rioters aren’t expected to respect business owners whose property they steal and destroy. Hand-wringers are supposed to respect and tolerate the illiteracy of those the public school system has failed to educate; the foul-mouthed ignoramuses are never reminded that they should show some respect to those who might employ them, or who fund their welfare benefits if they’re unemployable.
What’s sad is that every identity group understands the need to be respected, and trumpets that demand loudly and often. Questioned on whether the demand for respect carries the requirement to respect others, each group’s mouthpiece goes curiously silent.
The terms of the argument could not be any clearer. The only problem is that we lack for leaders and messengers who are willing to state the obvious.
Some distinctions, while real, are not useful. I don’t give a shit whether their actions are logical if the logic is built on psychotic premises.
McGehee
I’m not disagreeing with you. I just don’t think there is any “cure” for these people or any way to reason with them. They will never agree they are wrong.
The effort to ban “thug” (and replace it with…?) is a manifestation of The Euphemism Treadmill.
It is noticed that $Word[n] refers to a bad thing, and is thus deemed hurtful. The Sensitive People tell us we should use Word[n+1] instead.
After a while, people notice that $Word[n+1] refers to (the same) bad thing, and thus is hurtful.
Crippled => Handicapped => Disabled => Differently-Abled
Whatever word we use instead of “Thug” will be no different.
The dopiest being “people of color” as opposed to “colored-people”
Similar, almost all “naughty” words were euphemism originally or at least descriptive rather than a “proper” word. “shit” is just a variation of “shed” as in “shed skin”. “pussy” probably comes from a variation of “purse” with a clever twist somewhere referring to cats. etc etc
Well, except for that last one *glares st bjbear* Youze guys pounded the points. I was going to say poor grammar and making excuses for it was dog whistle for illiteracy and ass covering, but that’s pretty much stating the obvious in this crowd.
They won’t actually FORCE you to accept their beliefs, but if you don’t, you’re SOL.
“Feds Threaten to Pull Funding From Public Schools if They Don’t Adopt Transgender Policy”
di
Just another step on the road of making Leftist theology the only belief system allowed.
One has to accept the fact that any tax money going towards public education if pretty much being thrown down a rathole anyway.
If you like you can add this to your repertoire of rebuttals: WWJD about the Muhammad cartoons?.
Spoiler Alert: He didn’t make much effort to avoid offending murderous religious fanatics.
In a kind gesture the NYPD both presents the colors and leads the singing of the national anthem at the Rags game tonight. Big ovation from the crowd.
for any one keeping count (AAFAIK)
Obama had 3 representatives at Freddie Gray funeral
None at the NYPD Brian Moore one today.
Well hell, that’s an easy choice as between a heroin dealer and a decorated cop, it’s gonna be the druggie every time.
#blackscumbaglivesmatter for never let a crisis go to waste crowd
You’re assuming that Liberal Progressives define self interest in the same way that Conservatives do.
Winston Smith succumbed to that very mistake.
In this particular example, what’s wrong is a combination of progressive pity cum condescension masquerading as enlightened compassion, and a probable inability to actually grade on grammar were she required to, owing to her own insufficiencies.
They will not abandon their crusade but the other two they are freely tossing aside.
What stained Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress?
…
I’ll continue with Quiver Lip Bill for $300, please.
Andy McCarthy: Baltimore is Just the Latest Target in Obama’s Civil-Rights Crusade Against Police Departments
*** It is an utterly predictable development but an amazing one nonetheless. As Investors Business Daily points out, “just two months ago, President Obama held up the Baltimore police force as a model of unbiased community policing.” A report from the president’s “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” gushed that Baltimore — with a police department now almost 50 percent black and led by a black commissioner — had already implemented “national best practices for policies and training.” The city, the White House said, had modified those “outdated procedures” that “put officers at odds with the community.” ***
Spakovsky and Fund: This Taxpayer-funded Video Tribute to Eric Holder Brought to You by the DoJ
*** Holder is the only attorney general in history to be held in contempt of Congress. But that didn’t stop the Justice Department from releasing a nine-minute paean to him, which paints him as a cross between Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Theresa. It’s entitled “Attorney General Eric Holder: The People’s Lawyer.” ***