We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Syracuse course questions whether academia should stop teaching Shakespeare. Syracuse University is offering a course in the English Department this Fall, entitled “Why Shakespeare? Race in the Academy.”
As I see it, practical politics does not require philosophical consistency. However, there are attitudes with long histories which continue to shape practical politics.
Is there a "New Right"? I do not know what "Right" means in a country in which freedom from overly-intrusive government is termed "Right".
Ribbon Snakes are long (up to 30 inches), skinny members of the Garter Snake family, found across the Eastern half of the US.
We saw one slithering along a pond edge in New England two weeks ago. They like to hunt near water and marshes for bugs, tadpoles, etc., but I've seen them sunning on woodpiles a ways from ponds.
I found a lengthy word with a non-Russian ending, unwittingly, inside a children’s storybook, and turned away from it with a strange kind of shudder.
That word contained the writhing of mysterious passions: The growls, the howls, the whistles and the senseless visions, assassinated horses’ vitreous eyes,
the sinuous streets, the evil-auguring constructions, a man, incarnadine, prostrate upon his back, the bestial motions of somebody’s avid hands!
And, once upon a time, how sweet I used to find it to read of funny rabbits who would dance in spring with guinea pigs on stumps beneath the moon.
But now the fateful word above my childhood tales, stormlike, has rushed! Gone is their old simplicity; and terrifying thoughts, during the doomful nights,
You can be sure that as soon as the Zoom cameras are turned off the Chinese representatives burst out in laughter among themselves at how they have humiliated the foolish U.S. leaders.
... too many Americans have developed an acute fear of speaking up about social and political issues, especially those involving race. According to a recent Gallup poll, 77 percent of conservatives are afraid to share their political beliefs publicly. Worried about getting mobbed on social media, fired from their jobs, or worse, they remain quiet, largely ceding the public debate to those pushing these anti-American ideologies. Consequently, the institutions themselves become monocultures: dogmatic, suspicious, and hostile to a diversity of opinion. Conservatives in both the federal government and public school systems have told me that their “equity and inclusion” departments serve as political offices, searching for and stamping out any dissent from the official orthodoxy.
YouTube, being so bold, fearless and brave, has awarded its CEO the "2021 Free Expression Award", which was then accepted by the CEO, Susan Wojcicki. Wojcicki, in her acceptance speech, detailed how she works to deny freedoms because "The freedoms we have, we really can't take for granted, we also need to make sure there are limits."
This is cutting-edge stuff here. Orwell would have a field day with this one. That is, assuming anyone reads, let alone understands, Orwell anymore. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
I suppose I'd be aghast at the irony, hypocrisy, and outlandishness of all this. But when the Committee of Public Safety arrives, a distinct lack of intelligence is the norm. To paraphrase Monty Python, "Nobody expects the French Revolution." Except we're reaching a point where if you don't expect it, you're just not paying attention, or you love the new-fangled guillotines these modern Jacobins utilize.
President Joe Biden took the occasion of the conviction to recycle his favorite “white supremacy” themes from his allegedly “unifying” inaugural speech and campaign rhetoric. Floyd’s murder “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism . . . that is a stain our nation’s soul; the knee on the neck of justice for Black Americans; the profound fear and trauma, the pain, the exhaustion that Black and brown Americans experience every single day,” Biden said from the White House. The “summer of protest” had sent the message, according to Biden: “Enough. Enough. Enough of the senseless killings.”
Biden was not referring to the senseless killing of seven-year-old Jaslyn Adams, gunned down in a Chicago McDonald’s over the weekend. He was not referring to the four dozen black children who were killed last year in their beds, front porches, back porches, at barbecues and family birthday parties, and in their parents’ cars. He was not referring to the dozens of blacks killed every day in drive-by shootings—more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined—even though blacks are only 12 percent of the nation’s population...
Police shoot a lot more white people than black people. Who knew? It's not "news". Message to police officers is leave black people alone. However professional, they will tend to do that from now on.
Survey: We Keep Raising the Age That Children Are Allowed To Play Outside.
A new book: