In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
The current British government, run by the Tories, is on the verge of a humiliating defeat come the next General Election according to polls. Fifty years ago, the Tories again faced defeat, as discussed by William F. Buckley, Jr. with Bernard Levin and Anthony Lejeune who discussed this “British Crisis”.
A recent article over at Reason Magazine has highlighted a disturbing trend of wokeness, when it comes to Critical Race Theory becoming more accepted at younger ages, with the youngest adults (“Gen Z”) supporting the idea that White people are oppressors by a 4:1 margin with a majority saying that this ideology is helpful to society.
How did we get there? The long march through our institutions combined with a subtle strategy to change, through these institutions, the underlying principles and mores of society, while letting superficial normalcy remain until society has been hollowed out and that superficial normalcy swept away and a new normal replacing it that better fits in with the new structural principles of society.
In other words, while most people weren’t paying attention, the pillars of society were demolished carefully enough that the thin facade of “normalcy” remains so as to not spook the hoi polloi, and children indoctrinated in how to think such that they didn’t directly challenge what had bee normal until it was more explicitly challenged. So challenged, they generations, indoctrinated not only in schools starting over half-a-century ago, but also by the true believers who wormed their way into institutions and used our societies venerable tolerance to push their totalitarian intolerance to accelerate this wicked ideology. With this new way of thinking came new definitions for old terms, and new terms that sounded innocuous (e.g. “diversity, equity, and inclusion”), which, with a Motte & Bailey set-up, fundamentally changed how people think in a way that would make IngSoc of the world of Orwell’s “1984” seem jealous.
And those older generations who were not so indoctrinated from such a young age are helpless to do anything. Increasingly, the very fundamental values of our society, in their eyes, were ignored as they focused in on their own sense of “normalcy” as the sole and utter defense, as if it were the default of mankind that could be restored by only sweeping away the non-normal by calling it non-normal. Ah, oblivious they are who try to win arguments with a buggy whip of reason!
News of the Week for January 7thth, 2024
In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.
The lack of faith in our political institutions is nothing new, and fifty years ago it was as low as it is today. William F. Buckley, Jr. and Sen. Edmund Muskie discuss the crisis in government and public confidence.
News of the Week for December 30th, 2023
Just doing a little end-of-year cleaning out the Blogroll by removing defunct blogs. Only one blog that was listed in the sidebar is now pining for the fjords, and no longer exist. If it is your blog or if it has moved to a different URL, let me know and I’ll add it back in.
I do keep blogs that are still up, even if they haven’t been updated in years simply because those old blogs are still worth reading.
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