Leftism

Rhinoceros!

by

This link is not about a zoological species, but rather about Israel-bashing, anti-Semitism, and political intimidation on an American college campus. It deserves careful reading.

The “rhinoceros” reference is, of course, to Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 play, which is summarized at the link. (The play has also been made into an excellent film, featuring Zero Mostel–this would be a very good time to order it from Netflix or pick it up at a local video store.)

See also my 2002 post on the rise of political violence and intimidation in America.

link via Meryl Yourish

At Least One Person Agrees With Me

by

Just a little while ago I posted on how sick I was getting with the political correctness. I am glad there is one person who sees it the same way.

Cross posted at LITGM.

The Rust Coast

by

The speed with which socialism can destroy a region never ceases to stun me. In the 1960s Los  Angeles  eclipsed  New York as the place to be in America to make things happen. And now...

“The Rust Coast” seems an incorrect  metaphor as California does not have great industries of steel as did the Great Lake states. Yet, what do film, silicon and aircraft aluminum decay to?    

Whatever we call it, it is the dust of squandered dreams.  

[h/t Instapundit]

[Update: (2009-2-25 3:14pm):  Steven Malanga via Instapundit,

But California doesn’t just have a spending problem. Increasingly it also has economic and revenue problems. Even as I write this other neighboring states are running ads in local newspapers inviting California businesses to move their headquarters out of the state. That’s advertising money well spent. A poll of business executives conducted last year by Development Counsellors International, which advises companies on where to locate their facilities, tabbed California as the worst state to do business in.

There are a host of reasons why California has become toxic to business, ranging from the highest personal income tax rate in the country (small business owners are especially hard hit by PITs), to an environmental regulatory regime that has made electricity so expensive businesses simply can’t compete in California. That is one reason why even California-based businesses are expanding elsewhere, from Google, which built a server farm in Oregon, to Intel, which opened a $3 billion factory for producing microprocessors outside of Phoenix.

]

The land of double-think and memory hole

by

Without agreeing with everything he said, I am an unashamed admirer of George Orwell’s, though my favourite writings are not the two famous novels but his various political and literary essays. I find that there is nothing more annoying than watching people reduce this hard-headed and strong-minded writer to mush.

The guilty party in this case is the National Film Theatre, an institution that shows many excellent and entertaining second-rate films from the past, which is good; it also provides notes of unsurpassed silliness that are examples of soggy-left and thoughtless political consensus.

I have lost track of the number of times some American producer, director or actor who had a highly successful career in Britain, on the Continent or, even, back in the United States has been described as being a blameless, liberal victim of “McCarthyite witch hunts”, with complete disregard of the difference between the Senate enquiry that was not in the slightest interested in Hollywood and the House Un-American Activity Committee (HUAC) and equally complete disregard of the fact that most of those “innocent” victims were, in fact, Communists who had preferred to lie on orders from the Party. Nor do we get any explanation as to who, if anybody, actually prevented these people from working in Hollywood studios.

Now it is Orwell’s turn to be dragged into this morass of half-truths and double-think. (He would have understood it very well and railed against the sogginess and dishonesty.)

In April the NFT will be marking the 60th anniversary of the publication of “1984” with films about Orwell, as well as a showing of the famous 1956 version with Edmond O’Brien, the less well-known 1954 TV play with Peter Cushing and the 1984 film with John Hurt. Fine. But what do the notes in the recently sent out programme say?

2009 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s classic dystopian vision of Britain.

…

In Orwell’s re-imagining of British life in the year 1984 the nation has become Airstrip One, a subsidiary of Oceania, one of three global superstates engaged in relentless warfare against one another. London is a fetid, near-derelict metropolis dominated by the monolithic buildings of the ruling Party, its slums battered by rockets fired from enemy states. The collective memory of life before the wars has been all but obliterated by the Party which shapes and monitors the lives of its workers while keeping the disorderly ‘proles’ in a state of controlled ignorance.

Dystopian vision? Re-imagining of British life? Is there not a word missing here, one beginning with the letter “c”? Orwell was not writing a dystopian vision and, while he was re-imagining life in Britain and, to some extent, warning about governments grabbing too much power, he was describing a very precise society.

The shortages, the denunciations, the Inner and Outer Party, the re-writing of history and throwing articles about unpersons into the memory hole, the biographies of imaginary shock workers and, above all, the permanent enemy Emmanuel Goldberg, obviously the figure of Trotsky these are all aspects of Soviet society, of Communism. Clearly, as far as the NFT and its meandering, never-stepping-out-of-the-box programme organizers, Communism is just one of those unpleasant episodes that have to be thrown down the memory hole. Otherwise the left-wing vision of the world might be polluted.

(Astonishingly enough, this evening I heard an excellent talk given as introduction to Fritz Lang’s “The Testament of Dr Mabuse” by the writer and cinema critic Philip Kemp in which he openly equated Nazism and Stalinism. There were some murmurs in the audience but I could not make out whether these were noises of approval or of people getting the vapours. In my experience, this is a first for the National Film Theatre.)

This is based on a posting on Conservative History Journal blog

Reclaiming the franchise – part deux

by

If you are so minded, it isn’t hard to determine who should have their vote suspended until they join the world of wealth creation: those who take wealth contributed by others and give nothing in return (except their purchased vote). There are discrete borders.

The public sector is much harder. It is more diverse, for one thing. No one would argue that the emergency services or the military are not well entitled to their vote. We couldn’t do without them. I would also argue that the diplomatic service, by and large, not only performs an essential function it is the first port of call if a citizen gets into difficulties overseas but assists in the creation of wealth, in that part of its remit is to facilitate trade. Indeed, the foreign service is essential to any country’s wellbeing.

Most of the government agencies in Britain do perform a reasonable function, although, being socialists, not particularly well. (I don’t knows enough about the current workings within the US Government, but doubtless other Chicago Boyz do …)

But a whole new, utterly useless industry has crept in. Soft, amorphous, nebulous … the human rights, global warming, multiculti and associated industries. They perform no purpose. There is no hunger among the taxpayers for their existence. Yet they are paid out of the taxpayers’ pockets. The diversity industry is one such. It generates no wealth and performs no service other than placing the yoke of social engineering round the neck of the taxpayer. The human rights industry is another one. The social engineering industry is another. Far from being of service to the taxpayer, I would contend that they are destructive, and if they can’t be shut down, the people attending meetings and doing research and writing reports to no purpose should at least be removed from the electoral rolls because they are, essentially, not engaged in wealth creation or the facilitating of wealth creation, or the governance of wealth creation. In other words, they’re passengers.

In Britain, we also have the fascist Health & Safety departments in local governments which essentially seek to ban everything free people could normally engage in. For example, they want to outlaw swings in parks in case a child falls off. They want to ban parents from taking pictures of their children in public, in case they’re not really the parents, but paedophiles. Other examples are legion. But everything is always for a prim-lipped “moral” – therefore, inarguable – reason.

Also in Britain, and doubtless there will be a similar scam, differently named and presented actually, being American, probably better named and presented there is something called a quango. The initials stand for something, but who cares. These are “semi-government” think tanks and various advocacy groups. There are over 1100 quangoes in Britain now, like the liberty advocacy agency Liberty. What purpose it serves other than to provide employment for writers of press releases and spokesmen to go on TV talk shows, who knows? They enjoy favoured tax status, meaning, they are part of the government infrastructure.

Advertised jobs for local town and city councils now bristle with words like “Street football coordinator” (I have no idea) and “Real nappy (US: diaper) coordinator” (ditto) ; “Urdu translators”, “Bengali interpreters”, “Human rights managers” and so on. All of whose salaries, perks and pensions will be provided by the generosity of the taxpayer.

This, clearly, is wrong.

For one thing, the right wing taxpayer is being asked to fund a massive leftist Trojan horse. They contribute no wealth, nor the facilitation of creating wealth, and nor do they perform any essential public service. That they should have a vote on their own perpetuation dwells in the realm of lunacy.