Included in the long list of words that no longer mean what they used to - terrorism, indigenous, hate speech, and so on - is conspiracy theory. It used to mean that two or more people conspired to commit some nefarious act, in which case the official account of 9/11 would have been the quintessential … Continue reading CONSPIRACY THEORIES
MY MARXIST CREDENTIALS
I’ve never been sure what’s meant by left and right, but I am sure I’m neither. Still, it’s been brought to my attention - by a friend, so he must be right - that I’m more than a tad selective in my scathe. I go after leftist rhetoric without stint, but, he observes, I seem … Continue reading MY MARXIST CREDENTIALS
ACCOMMODATION
Right and wrong are moral terms. Just and unjust are political. But whether we want to know what’s right or what’s just, in either case form follows function. And so the first question to ask is what do we want morality or politics to do for us? In both cases the answer is we wantthemt … Continue reading ACCOMMODATION
WHITE SUPREMACY
There are a few people who think the Nazis had the right idea; they just got it wrong about which is the master race. There are more than a few people, myself included, who think that people of one race are, paradigmatically at least, better than those of another race in some particular respect. For … Continue reading WHITE SUPREMACY
INDIGENOUS WAYS OF KNOWING
We woke up this morning to the sight of a doe and two fawns grazing on our front lawn. If this happened in Berlin or Lyon or Naples, it would have made the front page. Having precious little of it of their own, Europeans are utterly amazed that there could be fauna beyond the confines … Continue reading INDIGENOUS WAYS OF KNOWING
THE DEFINITION OF INDIGENOUS
After thousands of years of migrations and cullings and displacements and interbreeding, if by the indigenous people of, say, southern Alberta, is meant the people who were first to get here, we have no idea who those people might have been. So presumably we mean the people who were already here when our own ancestors … Continue reading THE DEFINITION OF INDIGENOUS
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Note to self: Be careful how you sell yourself lest someone’s actually buying. Case in point? Fellow blogger Andrew Roman, may his tribe increase, has asked me to draw the distinction, if there is one, between justice and social justice. Don’t you just hate it when someone makes you think about something you haven’t thought … Continue reading SOCIAL JUSTICE
ALIENS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND RACE
It’s a little known fact - probably because it isn’t one, but that needn’t delay us here - that we’ve frequently been visited by creatures from outer space. Moreover, we’ve all seen them. But they’re extremely shy. And so whenever they see us seeing them, they shoot us with a forget-me ray, and sure enough … Continue reading ALIENS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND RACE
HOW TO SURRENDER IN THE LANGUAGE WAR
What do Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, George Orwell, and post-modern feminists have in common? They all triangulate on the fact that we think in words. And so if you can control what can be said, you can control what can be thought. And since, as Thomas Hobbes observed, “a man’s [sic] actions proceedeth from … Continue reading HOW TO SURRENDER IN THE LANGUAGE WAR
NOTES ON THE CULTURE WAR
The Cancel Culture War that’s been on high simmer for several years now has heated up considerably since the death of George Floyd on May 25th. That’s probably a good thing, insofar as the conflict is finally revealing what it’s not about. It’s not about ideas. Nor is it about whether it should be about … Continue reading NOTES ON THE CULTURE WAR
