I Want a New Left

Some Short Items

Some Advice for the Administration on Being Self-Critical

Everyone knows about how Bob Woodward has been told he would regret going against the administration by some unknown member of that administration. My advice to that person is pretty simple: don’t do anything that you wouldn’t like if a Republican administration did it. What would you say if the Republicans acted that way? Wouldn’t you be screaming about it? Yes, you would. So, don’t do it.


The Lack of a Need for a Debate, Since We Already Had One

This article tells about how army private Bradley Manning said he leaked data to Wikileaks because he wanted to start a public debate. He wanted to “spark a domestic public debate about our foreign policy and the war in general.” Well, Mr. Manning, we were already having a debate on those topics, but then they died down when Obama became president. Did you really think you could get them going again, in the face of the massive amounts of loyalty that the media have for our president? Or did you naively think that somehow Obama would be on your side against the “evil” Republicans, now that he's responsible for those wars? Either way, it looks like you got yourself into trouble for nothing.


College and the Poor

Despite the fact that academia is controlled by liberals and leftists, that doesn’t mean that things are rosy for poor people going to college. See this article, which talks about how confusing everything is for poor people. Though part of this can be blamed on the pathetic high schools we now have for the poor.


Turkish Prime Minister Goes Off the Deep End

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan declared recently that not only is Islamophobia a crime against humanity, but that antisemitism and Zionism are also (here). An interesting combination, that. This was at a UN event for tolerance, and I have to wonder, are we supposed to be tolerant of, say, the Muslims who shot the teenage Pakistani girl who was agitating for the rights of girls to go to school?

A New Map of the London Underground

Here is the old map, and here is a new one. Apparently, lots of people hate it, but I thought it was worth looking at just to get certain spatial relationships settled. For example, I’ve always thought of the road from Paddington to King’s Cross as basically going east, but it’s really east-northeast. And I thought the road going from that road down to Russell Square as going south, when it’s really going south-southeast. (When we lived in England, my wife and I walked along that road many times to get to the British Museum; it was along that stretch of road that a bus was blown up during the attacks of 7/7/05.) And the old map makes Marble Arch and Lancaster Gate look quite close, while the new map gives a better sense of how far apart they are. The old map also makes Oxford Circus look north-northeast of Victoria while the new map gives it better as plain north of Victoria. Maybe the worst distortion of the old map is with the Beckton station in the east. The old map shows it at the far end of a line going straight out, but the new map shows it as the end of a big curve, which means that Beckton and Beckton Park stations are actually quite close. You’d never know that from the old map.

The Day the War on America Began, and the Rise of Islamism

This article from Commentary magazine suggests that twenty years ago yesterday the Islamist war on America began. That may well be. But we knew that there was a war against the West the day of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which preceded it by a few years (2/14/89). And we knew that something new had been born into world affairs in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. My expectation throughout the 1970s when I heard about how Iranian leftists were plotting to overthrow the Shah was that once they succeeded, a socialist government would be installed. Instead, the leftists were elbowed aside by fundamentalist Muslims, who instituted a right-wing theocracy. And as I’ve said many times before, they then proceeded to butcher many Iranian liberals and leftists and jail plenty of others.

Strangely enough, although the left had a socialist revolution stolen from them, they have never seemed very bothered by this and to this day regard Iran as a sort of ally. Yet, there just wasn’t anything to suggest that fundamentalist Islam was gaining power. The general view of things when I was young was that religion was fading and that even in those non-Western countries where it remained it was going to be made more Western, more progressive. Both of these expectations have been dashed by the rise of Islamism. One would think that the many people of my generation who helped push for the secularism that now rules in America would be worried, but they are too busy tilting at the windmills of Christian fundamentalists to worry about this much more dangerous breed.

Baba Ganoush

For lovers of MXC, here. Jihad Joe and Happy Jihad One-Way Truck Rentals!

Theory Number 16 on the Left and Islam: Leftists Are Nihilists

See here for a roundup of the other fifteen theories. The phenomenon to be explained is why liberals and leftists are so willing to join with Muslims who are on the far right, given that those Muslims will likely kill them if their joint goal of destroying the West is ever attained. My latest theory comes from Stephen R. C. Hicks’s book Explaining Postmodernism. I first heard of this book the other day on the Gates of Vienna blog (here), which posted an essay that I talked about here in which Hicks’s book was frequently cited. I didn’t think much of the ideas when I saw them second-hand, but now that I am actually reading Hicks’s book, I can see they have a lot more to them than I originally thought.

Hicks’s theory on the left is that they are nihilistic. He doesn’t explicitly talk about the left and Islam, but what he does say is pertinent. He invokes Friedrich Nietzsche:

When some men fail to accomplish what they desire to do they exclaim angrily, “Let the whole world perish!” [Daybreak, section 304]

Leftists are enraged, Hicks thinks, because they have failed to destroy capitalism and have had many other failures, and these failures smart so much that they are willing to have their own movement be destroyed, so long as they can destroy the West.

This theory has plenty of virtues. To begin with, it certainly is true that the Soviet Union failed and that this was a big event for the left. And oftentimes people on the right have pointed out to leftists that the cost of the alliance with fundamentalist Islam will be their own self-destruction, yet this observation has never had any impact on them. But if one’s opponent is thinking, “So what? The important point is that you and your system will be destroyed, too,” then this makes sense.

On the other hand, this theory depends on the assumption that today’s leftists are primarily socialists and are only secondarily feminists, gay activists, secularists, etc. This is doubtful. Take the case of the feminists. They have a lot to lose if the West is destroyed and fundamentalist Muslims take over. And while their older feminist sisters seem content with the situation, my expectation is that sooner or later, as the news about rapes in Scandinavia and honor killings and what not seeps out, younger women are going to wake up someday and tell the older feminists to get lost.

And are such people so hateful of the West? Sure, plenty of people on the far left are, but even people on the near left who aren’t so hateful have supported the left’s alliance. Plus, while those on the far left proclaim their hatred of the West, it is not as though they are moving out to non-Western societies. Most stay right here.*

Finally, the fact that some on the far left are disappointed with the outcome of their struggles doesn’t mean that all are giving up. The fact that we have been saddled with socialist medicine in the last few years shows that they are still trying.

Anyway, I offer this theory as another way of explaining what seems to me nearly inexplicable, namely why the far left has joined with the far right.

* When I was in Egypt, I met a woman from Switzerland who frequently proclaimed her love for Egypt and the Egyptian people. I couldn’t make her out, and it wasn’t until months later that it dawned on me that probably what happened is that she was on the left and kept harping on how wonderful Muslims were, until someone challenged her to move to a Muslim country. So she did. Once there, she seemed to make a point of ignoring all the horrible things about Egyptian life that leftists ought to be bothered by: their treatment of women, of gays, and so on. But I’ll say this in her favor: she actually accepted the challenge. Most leftists don’t. They rail about how awful the West is, but when push comes to shove, they prefer to stay here. She actually went. It’s true that she didn’t move to Saudi Arabia, but she did move to a Muslim country.

A Few Short Items

STEM Majors

I’ve been saying for a while that although a STEM major may seem like a better bet than a humanities major, things aren’t so rosy on the ground. I have a B.S. in math, and if there were lots of jobs out there, I’d be hearing about them, and I’m not. This article and this article agree with me. And the first comment at the second link says that it makes more sense to go to Wall Street and be a “quant” than to go into science as a career.


Women in Turkey

This article in an English-language Turkish newspaper affirms what many of us have been warning about with respect to any government run by fundamentalist Muslims. Don't count on much help from them.


The Riot in a Minneapolis High School

See here. It’s tough when liberal left expectations of harmony between people who aren’t white don’t work out. Also, why isn’t someone who is of Somali descent who now lives in America an African-American?

As for reparations, it would be very difficult to determine how to assess what each white American would owe. I have a friend whose parents came to America from Poland right after WWII. Why should he owe anything? Simply because he and his parents are marginally better, at best, than they might have been if blacks hadn’t been slaves? He might also be able to claim that his life was slightly worse because his parents were immigrants. Likewise, most of my ancestors came to America after slavery had been ended, and those who came before settled in the North; plus all of them were poor. The amount that they were helped by slavery’s having existed just looks extremely small, whereas there are others, such as the descendants of actual slave owners, who obviously benefitted quite a bit. I don’t trust any liberals or leftists these days to make sure that people like me and my friend will not be burdened very much by any reparations scheme. There’s too much talk these days of white privilege and not enough about class privilege.


Yet Another Example of Racial “Harmony”

See here. The story talks about how in Plano, Texas, Latinos are being targeted by blacks.


And One More Article on Racial Harmony

See here. A British woman complains that her neighborhood in London is filled with people who are immigrants who have no interest in assimilating. Of particular interest is the sign in the store prohibiting alcoholic beverages not only in the store but in the streets near the shop. This is typical of the arrogance we are fighting. She ends by moaning, “mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all.” I wouldn’t call it racism; it really deserves to be called culturism, if there is such a word, since what is offensive is not the race or the ethnic group but their culture.

Unanswered Questions in the Elisa Lam Case

Elisa Lam is the young woman from Canada who was found dead in a cistern on the roof of the Los Angeles hotel where she was staying. This, of course, is awfully strange, and it is hard to imagine that she went there of her own volition and accidentally fell in, and since this is hard to imagine that suggests foul play, but unfortunately, the reporting on this story leaves a lot to be desired so it’s hard to reach any conclusions. For example, although it’s clear that her family isn’t answering media questions, what about her friends? Are they keeping quiet or is it that the media haven’t bothered to look for them? And how about a boy friend? So far, the only friend who has commented is a male friend from high school, who may not have even seen her recently.

Another Bad Machine Translation; and Fridays in the Arab World

Google Translate has translated the headline of this BBC Arabic article so as to suggest that Morsi is changing the elections, as shown below:



In fact, it missed the word “date.” The headline says that Morsi is changing the date of the elections.

And since I'm talking about the Arab world, here is an image from an Arabic-language newspaper:

The headline says, "A crowd of the 'Friday of the trial of the regime' in Egypt raises the level of disobedience." Since the beginning of the Arab spring, protesters have often dubbed Fridays with a name, with this week's in Egypt being the Friday of the trial of the regime (which I take to mean that the regime is on trial as far as the protesters are concerned). Last week's was the Friday of dignity.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never see these names reported in the American media.

Some More Governmental Stupidity

See here. A ten-year-old boy in Virginia was first suspended from school for having a toy gun, and then arrested. I admit that this is monumentally stupid, and I deplore it, but when I think about it from the authorities’ side, I can kind of see where they are coming from. They reason that if they don’t do this sort of thing, someone will notice and sue them, so it’s better to be safe (from a lawsuit) and look stupid than to use common sense and deal with the hassle of getting sued.

Incredible Governmental Stupidity in China

This Huffington Post article claims that the Chinese government has banned reincarnating without the government’s permission. As if they could control that.

It’s true that the intent seems to be to take control of who the next Dalai Lama will be, but it’s hard to imagine them succeeding when everyone will know that a lama chosen by the Chinese government will hardly be the spiritual being that Tibetan Buddhists expect him or her to be.