July 11, 2023 - 5:00pm
The politicisation of institutions leads to a loss of public confidence as partisans become aware of what is going on inside them. Universities are a paradigm case.
To wit, a new poll from Gallup shows that Americans’ confidence in their institutions of higher education has plummeted from 57% in 2015 to 36% today. While all voters are frustrated with rising student debt and the spiralling cost of higher education due to administrative bloat, there is a strong ideological dimension at work, too.
Figure 1 shows that confidence declined most sharply among Republicans, tanking by a whopping 37 points to just 19%. Independents registered a 16-point drop and Democrats a small but significant 9-point decline. While those without a degree are more sceptical than those with one, differences by education, age or gender are less pronounced.
These results correlate with those from other sources. The New America Foundation found that the share of Americans saying universities “have a positive effect on the way things are going in this country” declined from 69% in 2020 to 55% in 2022. By a 75-37 margin, Democrats were more likely to view universities’ contributions positively.
The well-documented proliferation of cancel culture incidents on campus has undoubtedly been a contributing factor behind this decline. For example, the number of speech censorship or targeting incidents recorded by the College Fix’s Campus Cancel Culture Database jumped from around 100 to 300 between 2015 and 2020. Meanwhile, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Scholars Under Fire database found a fourfold leap from under 40 to over 200 targeting incidents between 2015 and 2021. And in the UK, campus cancel culture incidents, as recorded by Academics for Academic Freedom, jumped from six to 24 between 2015 and 2021 — in line with US trends, albeit at a lower level.
Confidence in universities is also connected to trust in academics. In a Qualtrics survey I conducted in 2021, just 34% of 2020 Republican voters trusted social science and humanities (SSH) professors compared to 81% for Democratic voters. The gap for science, mathematics and engineering (STEM) fields was smaller (89-67). The well-documented Left-wing skew in the American professoriate, especially in the social sciences and humanities, is increasingly public knowledge, and is likely contributing to the effect.
This taps into a wider disaffection with public institutions. Gallup finds declines in trust for public schools, the police and large businesses, among others, but once again there is a partisan dimension, with Pew showing that just 37% of Republicans trust public schools, compared to 72% of Democrats.
In Britain, I asked a similar set of questions to those from the US Qualtrics survey and found a much higher, bipartisan level of trust in academics, as shown in Figure 2. At the same time, I uncovered a lower, bipartisan trust in journalists. The largest political divide was with regard to SSH academics, though it was 19 points compared to 47 points in America.
While it may be tempting to blame America’s partisan polarisation for its plummeting institutional trust, it’s worth asking whether similar trends are taking hold in Britain and other countries, and whether they may come to follow the US’s lead.
Why might this be? A large reason is that British universities, schools and other institutions appear to be following the same path of contentious politicisation around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and critical race and gender theory that has contributed to falling trust in American institutions. For instance, 78% of 18 year-olds in 2022 heard at least one critical race or gender concept from an adult in school, with this being taught as the only respectable view in seven of 10 cases. The growth of the DEI sector has also mushroomed, to the point that six in 10 British workers in organisations of 100 or more people have taken diversity training.
If British institutions had any sense, they would learn from the American experience and swiftly change course. I won’t be holding my breath.
Eric Kaufmann is Professor at the University of Buckingham, and author of Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities. He is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange.
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SubscribeThe really worrying thing now is that the onward momentum of hard left indoctrination is beginning to crush even inner resistance. We’ve heard for years of cancelled academics getting secret messages of support from disaffected but cowardly colleagues. Now, those messages are drying up and people are internalising and accepting the madness.
To live “against the world” is a tough business and only potential martyrs or natural loners can sustain it over decades – especially if most of their lives remain to be lived. If you can’t beat ’em and so on.
This is a very usual process. By the 1570s most hold out Catholics in England would have traipsed off to morning prayer. By the ninth century AD most middle eastern Christians would have opted for Islam, just as the pagans before them had opted for Christianity.
But the belief system which is currently taking over the public mind is – we have to recall – both sinister and insane. It is, as far as ethnic Europeans are concerned, a systematised process of self-hatred. Beyond that, it is a complete denial of anything resembling objective reality, in the place of which it settles an authoritarian relativism. It is literally Orwellian: “How many fingers am I holding up?” asks O’Brien, to which the answer is: however many “the party” says there are. Substitute for O’Brien’s question something such as: “Is this a man or a woman, Winston?” and the point will become clear.
The public may indeed be suspicious, discontented, unhappy – deeply, deeply unhappy – but they remain quiescent and powerless. Society is in despair.
Well said. It is so important to reference and learn from the religious convulsions and terror of the 16th century & Reformation. All of the same tremours are being felt today. The Progressive EDI ideology is a direct culty offshoot of the puritanical Calvanist Elect, making thought a crime and seeking to purify and scourge society. Everyone recognises the repellent moral superiority of the Diversity Industry charlatans and Just Stop Oil creeps. But sadly we are missing the most scary fact about them. In this Elect/Higher Moral worldview, there are only two groups – the Chosen and the Righteous Few…. and those who are without Virtue and not chosen; the Damned. The reason why our Elite have been punishing the poor and working classes so hard – esp the oiky uneducated Brexiteers of the decaying North – is not really a secret, though they cannot ever say it. They are fully aware of the suffering that comes from turning blind eyes to islamist ‘its love really’ terror, the evil grooming gangs, rampant street crime, the crippling multiple pressures on a creaking public sector stoked by decades of mass uncontrolled immigration or the more recebr tyranny of a catastrophic lockdown & Net Zero Ulez bullying. They know. But this New Elect – immune from these punitive shocks by their million pound capital gain property heist – really do not CARE. They do not care for those who deny their Truth and ideology. They despise them. That is, they actually despise us, the silent majority of people. Study the History. Study the Religion.
In your estimation: What percentage, even of people under 30, fit this New Elect model of blind-faith, hellfire sputtering secular extremists?
Hard to say. But a survey of the entire political estate – parliament, civil service, public sector, regulators, technocracy, London media and law would probably reveal 90% Second Referendum Remainers, many of whom think Brexiteers are unworthy of a vote and who smile at thought that the 52% are dying out; 80% who bent knee to BLM, put up the BLM poster and were ok with their right to defy lockdown law/riot and bash police horses; 95% who loved the 2 year lockdown and were utterly indifferent to its catastrophic impacts (they all got rich from wfh); 90% who buy into the degrowth Net Zero groupthink – again – indifferent to its impact on the poor and majority; 80% in favour of preventing the attack on the people traffickers with a Rwanda plan… better to declare ‘open border’ anti racist virtue than to interrupt a criminal trade. Probably 60% sign up to the Stonewall style gender worldview on front holes and no biology though none of the 40% would ever dare speak out versus terf/woman bashing. 100% are afflicted by the inchoate pyschological terror of discriminating in any way, hence wealth creation or tax cuts for rich are now seen by them as a dirty vice. Like any cult ideology enforced by fear of social ostracism/cancellation, many might think heretically and be wary of woke groupthink in the privacy of their soul or when their teen daughter says they wants to be a man. But as the excellent first post observes, few have the courage and will to fight. The ideology is being driven by the State itself via its rogue State equality laws, so it is already a David v Goliath battle, especially for insiders.
Excellent riposte!
Excellent riposte!
Last survey I saw suggested 13% of UK population were members of a progressive/woke tribe but 30% of under 30s. I suspect, however, that 50%+ of Gen Z students qualify.
What is less clear is how many members of the progressive tribe are merely conformists who are going along with the dominant mentality amongst their colleagues and contemporaries (who presumably would adapt to a new orthodoxy with ease) and how many are strongly committed to the ideas with “blind faith, hell fire spluttering zeal” – and how many actually understand Critical Theory etc.
If one looks at the middle age progressive careerists in charge of key institutions one suspects that there are few true believers and many conformists – and very few who understand what it is they are supporting or facilitating.
I appreciate your specific answer but having recently spent time among much younger grad and undergrad students I think the number of “true believers” is closer to 10% among 25 and youngers. Still worrisome, but I see major potential for many to snap or age out of it. I can see a plausible case for some progressive or woke leanings among 50% of Gen Z but I don’t think that equates directly with zealotry.
As many have observed, a huge part of the problem is the loudness and air/print time given to the most extreme, inflexible voices. Their intolerance shall not stand.
*Re-reading your comment, I see that I was inattentive. We are in stronger agreement than I first realized. We can hope, on a foundation of something more than mere naive sentiment, that the conformists can be rescued from the hardcore zealots, with a sustained and forceful, nonviolent effort.
How true. When I pointed out to relatives how the basic culture had changed in the last 20 years & gave evidence & reasons for it happening, I was called racist! Oh dear, telling the truth with facts is now condemned.
Their beliefs are extremely shallow and they cannot make a case for them which is why they have to defend their views with a mixture of vehemence and bluster
I think when the reality of the platitudes hit people they snap out of it. No one wants someone with a p***s showering in a women’s locker room. The example of men in women’s prisons in Scotland is a good example. You can believe in solar panels until your heating bills triple and the grid fails. There will also be some really interesting steering effects. When enough men stop going to university then women will stop as well since the social experience is a huge part of the attraction.
I appreciate your specific answer but having recently spent time among much younger grad and undergrad students I think the number of “true believers” is closer to 10% among 25 and youngers. Still worrisome, but I see major potential for many to snap or age out of it. I can see a plausible case for some progressive or woke leanings among 50% of Gen Z but I don’t think that equates directly with zealotry.
As many have observed, a huge part of the problem is the loudness and air/print time given to the most extreme, inflexible voices. Their intolerance shall not stand.
*Re-reading your comment, I see that I was inattentive. We are in stronger agreement than I first realized. We can hope, on a foundation of something more than mere naive sentiment, that the conformists can be rescued from the hardcore zealots, with a sustained and forceful, nonviolent effort.
How true. When I pointed out to relatives how the basic culture had changed in the last 20 years & gave evidence & reasons for it happening, I was called racist! Oh dear, telling the truth with facts is now condemned.
Their beliefs are extremely shallow and they cannot make a case for them which is why they have to defend their views with a mixture of vehemence and bluster
I think when the reality of the platitudes hit people they snap out of it. No one wants someone with a p***s showering in a women’s locker room. The example of men in women’s prisons in Scotland is a good example. You can believe in solar panels until your heating bills triple and the grid fails. There will also be some really interesting steering effects. When enough men stop going to university then women will stop as well since the social experience is a huge part of the attraction.
Hard to say. But a survey of the entire political estate – parliament, civil service, public sector, regulators, technocracy, London media and law would probably reveal 90% Second Referendum Remainers, many of whom think Brexiteers are unworthy of a vote and who smile at thought that the 52% are dying out; 80% who bent knee to BLM, put up the BLM poster and were ok with their right to defy lockdown law/riot and bash police horses; 95% who loved the 2 year lockdown and were utterly indifferent to its catastrophic impacts (they all got rich from wfh); 90% who buy into the degrowth Net Zero groupthink – again – indifferent to its impact on the poor and majority; 80% in favour of preventing the attack on the people traffickers with a Rwanda plan… better to declare ‘open border’ anti racist virtue than to interrupt a criminal trade. Probably 60% sign up to the Stonewall style gender worldview on front holes and no biology though none of the 40% would ever dare speak out versus terf/woman bashing. 100% are afflicted by the inchoate pyschological terror of discriminating in any way, hence wealth creation or tax cuts for rich are now seen by them as a dirty vice. Like any cult ideology enforced by fear of social ostracism/cancellation, many might think heretically and be wary of woke groupthink in the privacy of their soul or when their teen daughter says they wants to be a man. But as the excellent first post observes, few have the courage and will to fight. The ideology is being driven by the State itself via its rogue State equality laws, so it is already a David v Goliath battle, especially for insiders.
Last survey I saw suggested 13% of UK population were members of a progressive/woke tribe but 30% of under 30s. I suspect, however, that 50%+ of Gen Z students qualify.
What is less clear is how many members of the progressive tribe are merely conformists who are going along with the dominant mentality amongst their colleagues and contemporaries (who presumably would adapt to a new orthodoxy with ease) and how many are strongly committed to the ideas with “blind faith, hell fire spluttering zeal” – and how many actually understand Critical Theory etc.
If one looks at the middle age progressive careerists in charge of key institutions one suspects that there are few true believers and many conformists – and very few who understand what it is they are supporting or facilitating.
In your estimation: What percentage, even of people under 30, fit this New Elect model of blind-faith, hellfire sputtering secular extremists?
I disagree. I think there is robust, growing pushback against attempts at hard-left indoctrination. A major U.S. presidential candidate has made these educational culture wars central to his campaign and Kathleen Stock is developing a growing platform in the wake of her wrongful dismissal. The center-left former president Barack Obama made a forceful and impactful case against wokeism, call-out culture, and judgmental self-certainty in general a few years ago. For those who can get past the forum (Guardian News) and messenger, his remarks are quite heartening, I think. It’s about two minutes long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
But for those who think Obama is hard-left, or an idiot, we live in different perceived realities and will have to find other things to agree on, if there’s any mutual willingness to find consensus and understanding elsewhere.
To me, the widespread despair you all-too-correctly diagnose is not primarily the result of ideology, but: wired -in isolation, lack of purpose, economic hardship and uncertainty, and mutual hostility given exacerbating support by the informational bubbles so many of us live in. Too many preemptively deny the good intentions and possible intelligence of those who disagree with them about politics or culture. The pandemic & its aftermath and quality of our recent leaders–on both sides of the aisle and “sides of the pond”–have increased our overall frustration & despair too.
If the hard-left has decisively won some ideological zero-sum war: Why are most presidential elections damn near 50-50% (or 47-45, etc.)?
For exemplary instances of pushback from within institutional or “elite” pockets of U.S. society, check out: Heterodox Academy, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), and persuasion.community
Agree. It is easy to despair but a push back is developing. It could go either way.
I think the key will be the reemergence of thoughtful public debate. Woke ideas will struggle if exposed to scrutiny and argument; the more loopy or malign aspects will fall by the wayside while the better impulses survive.
One historical comparison is with McCarthyism which was horrifying, appeared irresistible but ultimately proved transient.
Maybe the dominant communication technology of the 2010s was Twitter but that of the 2020s will be podcasts. If so, I suspect we will be better off.
Yes there is greater awareness. But I think it is far too premature to call it a pushback for several reasons. A. Outside of tiny free non mainstream outlets like Unherd, the Progressive agenda is advanced daily 24/7 by the BBC State media. As with ‘pushback’ against lockdown, Net Zero targets, or the spread of crazed Stonewall wokery, ideas which do not conform to the Orthodoxy are simply not shared or disseminated in the public domain – and so they are defeated and seen off. The bizarre idea that tax cuts are (discriminatory) ergo immoral only became normalized by the media & political classes in the Truss panic. The sickly underlying culture of victimhood greviance and Human right entitlements is growing in strength not weakening. B. Note It is still only a very few brave outliers like JKR who have the courage to take on the Woke Mob. The State sits back passively, complicit and it is dug up very deep.
Exactly. These threads are collections of eccentrics. The mass is being indoctrinated. A middle aged lady of my acquaintance, a lifelong Tory, was telling me the other day of a visit to the British Museum, with grandchildren. She enjoyed it, she said, “but it should all go back”. I queried the notion of “going back” on several fronts, whereupon she emerged as if from a dream and said, “I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Hadn’t thought that the British Museum had looked after these objects for up to two centuries; that they were acquired legally, with no protest from the “locals”; that these same locals often held such objects in contempt; that their ancestors had vandalised them in the first place (when they invaded and occupied Egypt in the seventh century) and that their descendants would probably do the same, quite soon, now – think of poor Palmyra. “Go back”, then, to what? And to where? Any yet, such is the ambient poison that humdrum ladies and gentlemen, innocent members of the public, are starting to parrot it, along with small-talk. No, let us have no nonsense about “pushback”. What we have here is no more than a campfire amid the gathering darkness and insanity.
Totalizing despair is nonsense. Even if your bleak assessment were precisely on point, it would still be necessary to move forward as if the pushback whose existence you deny, the dissent whose amplitude you ridicule, had meaning. Your own despair is not an accurate reflection of the entire culture.
Dismissing and demonizing other quite lost and despairing souls is also a mistaken path. Snap out of it.
A fairly feeble response, no? Like saying “pull yourself together” on the bridge of the sinking Titanic. If we can’t sustain the sight of the end then – or now – then when? And isn’t the ability to look truth in the eye, even at its darkest, a vitally important virtue? There is hope, yes; and then there is shallow optimism…
“All seems infected that the infected spy, / As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye” –Pope
Despair is the feeblest response there is, called a deadly sin with good reason. I am not advocating optimism at all, but the stubborn unwillingness to abandon hope, which is needed for any useful effort. Cheers.
Don’t talk of “sin” in this canting way, there’s a good chap. This is a debating chamber, not a chapel. But since you have a taste for the metaphysical, how do you reconcile simple truth with all this pious uplift? Which of the virtues is prior – honesty? (Which can mean sincerity, don’t forget) or hope? I put honesty first. Truth is the primary, absolute value, for without it nothing else can be known or perhaps even be. You yourself have conceded that I might well be correct in my bleak assessments. You then make the leap to calling this “despair” but this is unwarranted and presumptuous, as puritanical outburst so frequently are. Don’t forget: just because society is decadent it does NOT follow that one personally despairs. One might be resolved and indeed planning to live through the first decades of a dark age in individual, pious hope. And in order to manage this ticklish business we need honest, accurate assessments of our situation, don’t we?
Don’t talk of “sin” in this canting way, there’s a good chap. This is a debating chamber, not a chapel. But since you have a taste for the metaphysical, how do you reconcile simple truth with all this pious uplift? Which of the virtues is prior – honesty? (Which can mean sincerity, don’t forget) or hope? I put honesty first. Truth is the primary, absolute value, for without it nothing else can be known or perhaps even be. You yourself have conceded that I might well be correct in my bleak assessments. You then make the leap to calling this “despair” but this is unwarranted and presumptuous, as puritanical outburst so frequently are. Don’t forget: just because society is decadent it does NOT follow that one personally despairs. One might be resolved and indeed planning to live through the first decades of a dark age in individual, pious hope. And in order to manage this ticklish business we need honest, accurate assessments of our situation, don’t we?
Your characterization of the status quo as a “sinking titanic” makes you sound quite prissy and breathless. Incidentally, this is not a “debating chamber” but an open comments board. Nor do you engage in anything approaching good-faith argument here. You are largely hurling platitudes, useless and tired ones at that, so come down from your puffed-up virtual perch, buddy.
So many Catastrophizing Chicken Littles, drunk on downer juice that tastes like truth serum on their scorched tongues.
Stop believing every little thing you think, my dear fellow. Your rabbit hole is not raised into a debating chamber by declaration alone.
*(I’m not permitted to reply elsewhere on this board) Even though we’re not getting anywhere I’ll conclude with these remarks:
Fair enough on the honest assessment part. I should have granted that more respect. (Fair enough on the distinction between a general diagnosis and personal despair too). But I did start out by simply stating my own honest, conflicting assessment. Respect and good- faith exchange should be mutual. Calling my own honest responses feeble and “there’s a good chap” were sneering provocations, weren’t they.
I acknowledge that you may very well be closer to the truth than I want to allow in your bleak assessment, but your “sky is falling” (ok, “titanic is sinking”) panic button tone is not founded upon any series of well-established truths or empirical proofs. Debating chamber?! Get over yourself, man.
I just looked it up and the top two virtues–on one of the antique Catholic lists–are humility and charity. I estimate we could both stand to step it up on those fronts, without venturing into anything disorientingly non-rational. Have a good day, unless you have other plans.
“All seems infected that the infected spy, / As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye” –Pope
Despair is the feeblest response there is, called a deadly sin with good reason. I am not advocating optimism at all, but the stubborn unwillingness to abandon hope, which is needed for any useful effort. Cheers.
Your characterization of the status quo as a “sinking titanic” makes you sound quite prissy and breathless. Incidentally, this is not a “debating chamber” but an open comments board. Nor do you engage in anything approaching good-faith argument here. You are largely hurling platitudes, useless and tired ones at that, so come down from your puffed-up virtual perch, buddy.
So many Catastrophizing Chicken Littles, drunk on downer juice that tastes like truth serum on their scorched tongues.
Stop believing every little thing you think, my dear fellow. Your rabbit hole is not raised into a debating chamber by declaration alone.
*(I’m not permitted to reply elsewhere on this board) Even though we’re not getting anywhere I’ll conclude with these remarks:
Fair enough on the honest assessment part. I should have granted that more respect. (Fair enough on the distinction between a general diagnosis and personal despair too). But I did start out by simply stating my own honest, conflicting assessment. Respect and good- faith exchange should be mutual. Calling my own honest responses feeble and “there’s a good chap” were sneering provocations, weren’t they.
I acknowledge that you may very well be closer to the truth than I want to allow in your bleak assessment, but your “sky is falling” (ok, “titanic is sinking”) panic button tone is not founded upon any series of well-established truths or empirical proofs. Debating chamber?! Get over yourself, man.
I just looked it up and the top two virtues–on one of the antique Catholic lists–are humility and charity. I estimate we could both stand to step it up on those fronts, without venturing into anything disorientingly non-rational. Have a good day, unless you have other plans.
A fairly feeble response, no? Like saying “pull yourself together” on the bridge of the sinking Titanic. If we can’t sustain the sight of the end then – or now – then when? And isn’t the ability to look truth in the eye, even at its darkest, a vitally important virtue? There is hope, yes; and then there is shallow optimism…
Totalizing despair is nonsense. Even if your bleak assessment were precisely on point, it would still be necessary to move forward as if the pushback whose existence you deny, the dissent whose amplitude you ridicule, had meaning. Your own despair is not an accurate reflection of the entire culture.
Dismissing and demonizing other quite lost and despairing souls is also a mistaken path. Snap out of it.
In the US, boycotts of woke companies, especially AB-Inbev and Target stores, are starting to cost these companies billions of dollars. This may be an early indication of Republicans possibly beating the margin of fraud in 2024.
Exactly. These threads are collections of eccentrics. The mass is being indoctrinated. A middle aged lady of my acquaintance, a lifelong Tory, was telling me the other day of a visit to the British Museum, with grandchildren. She enjoyed it, she said, “but it should all go back”. I queried the notion of “going back” on several fronts, whereupon she emerged as if from a dream and said, “I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Hadn’t thought that the British Museum had looked after these objects for up to two centuries; that they were acquired legally, with no protest from the “locals”; that these same locals often held such objects in contempt; that their ancestors had vandalised them in the first place (when they invaded and occupied Egypt in the seventh century) and that their descendants would probably do the same, quite soon, now – think of poor Palmyra. “Go back”, then, to what? And to where? Any yet, such is the ambient poison that humdrum ladies and gentlemen, innocent members of the public, are starting to parrot it, along with small-talk. No, let us have no nonsense about “pushback”. What we have here is no more than a campfire amid the gathering darkness and insanity.
In the US, boycotts of woke companies, especially AB-Inbev and Target stores, are starting to cost these companies billions of dollars. This may be an early indication of Republicans possibly beating the margin of fraud in 2024.
As you know from earlier exchanges, I’m in primary agreement with you. But to offer different wording that might be likelier to please your sometime interlocutor N. Satori: I think the re-emergence or strengthening of public discussion would have an even more wholesome, far-reaching effect. Debate is an element of that general discussion, of course. Talking to one’s neighbors and fellow citizens face-to-face, though usually avoiding outright debate, could help the ease the ideological impasse too.
Unfortunately, I see a far greater historical resonance with the Nazi party policies.
Yes there is greater awareness. But I think it is far too premature to call it a pushback for several reasons. A. Outside of tiny free non mainstream outlets like Unherd, the Progressive agenda is advanced daily 24/7 by the BBC State media. As with ‘pushback’ against lockdown, Net Zero targets, or the spread of crazed Stonewall wokery, ideas which do not conform to the Orthodoxy are simply not shared or disseminated in the public domain – and so they are defeated and seen off. The bizarre idea that tax cuts are (discriminatory) ergo immoral only became normalized by the media & political classes in the Truss panic. The sickly underlying culture of victimhood greviance and Human right entitlements is growing in strength not weakening. B. Note It is still only a very few brave outliers like JKR who have the courage to take on the Woke Mob. The State sits back passively, complicit and it is dug up very deep.
As you know from earlier exchanges, I’m in primary agreement with you. But to offer different wording that might be likelier to please your sometime interlocutor N. Satori: I think the re-emergence or strengthening of public discussion would have an even more wholesome, far-reaching effect. Debate is an element of that general discussion, of course. Talking to one’s neighbors and fellow citizens face-to-face, though usually avoiding outright debate, could help the ease the ideological impasse too.
Unfortunately, I see a far greater historical resonance with the Nazi party policies.
We can agree that there is resistance; the vast majority of silent majority people in the UK are bewildered and hostile to the so called woke ideology. But ‘pushback’ requires power and that power is now exercised largely above the people and sits outside of the weakened parliamentary/democratic sphere by a detached permanent unelected elite army of judges lawyers regulators and technocrats – Bank of E NHS PHE and more. And THEY and the ahabby politicos of all psrties have signed up for many years to a revolutionary set of ideas – NONE of which have the consent of the people. Net Zero? Barely had 90 min ‘debate’. Uncontrolled legal and illegal migration? People said NO. Blob said YES. Lockdown consent? I think not. Polite discourse within the civic space is all well and good. But in a classic Leninist way, the Progressives have taken command all institutions within our law media education and culture, fortified by the equality mania written into State law. How are you/we ever going to pushback against a permanent elite wedded to these ideologies? Not even a Tory Government with 80 seat maj could pushback. On the contrary, the Fool Johnson & Treasury Stoodge Rishi accelerated the Socialist bailouts and NHS Worship splurging , said ugh no to lower taxation, waved in 1.2m legals, backed ESG and Net Zero nutcasery and have left the fight versus the crazies to JKR and a few brave individuals. Where do you see hope in this reality??
I have very little knowledge of UK specifics.
But your description of a “permanent elite wedded to wokeness” sounds both ahistorical and hyperbolic to me. Why permanent? How deeply espoused are they?
You’ve set some threshold for “pushback” that sounds more like “victory”. These ideological conflicts will rage and subside, flare-up and ebb for all foreseeble time. This is not some un-faceable threat, nor is it truly new in degree or kind (arguable, but that’s my stance).
The fact that woke orthodoxy is so serious and daunting–though also quite ridiculous in many cases–makes it all the more important to remain hopeful and be strong in opposition. And to resist demonizing those among the seeming zombies who might be reached–more than many admit or even imagine, I am convinced.
I’m not saying it is fine, let it go. I’m insisting that individual and grass-roots acts of courage and good-faith engagement are valuable, and can have massive ripple effects. Despair doesn’t become a better choice in times of great crisis. Hope doesn’t become less necessary.
“… permanent elite wedded to wokeness” sounds both ahistorical and hyperbolic …”
Your “very little knowledge of UK specifics” is evident from your statement!
Haha. Weak. The US is the birthplace of the recent woke movement, which I have observed quite closely, both within and outside of academia.
Permanent unchanging elites have existed nowhere. Even the Church yielded after centuries, and this secular movement, despite some religious aspects, doesn’t have a revelatory core. Marx and his acolytes can’t match the Gospels.
Some people, across the political spectrum, treat their hopelessness like a valuable possession and are offended at any signs that their apocalyptic pronouncements are premature at best. To those who chime in only to specify why and how were are doomed, operating under the assumption that imminent doom is a foregone conclusion: Have fun working each other up an then commiserating with one another about it.
My spotty sense of UK inner workings doesn’t prevent me from seeing that that is what of y’all are doing, whether the topic is centered in the States (as it very often is) or not.
‘The [man] doth protest too much, methinks.’ [Shakespeare]
M’kay. You do know that “protest” meant “hold forth” not “dispute” in Elizabethan English…wait! That still works as a dig at me. Good shot. Fare thee well and carry on then.
M’kay. You do know that “protest” meant “hold forth” not “dispute” in Elizabethan English…wait! That still works as a dig at me. Good shot. Fare thee well and carry on then.
‘The [man] doth protest too much, methinks.’ [Shakespeare]
Haha. Weak. The US is the birthplace of the recent woke movement, which I have observed quite closely, both within and outside of academia.
Permanent unchanging elites have existed nowhere. Even the Church yielded after centuries, and this secular movement, despite some religious aspects, doesn’t have a revelatory core. Marx and his acolytes can’t match the Gospels.
Some people, across the political spectrum, treat their hopelessness like a valuable possession and are offended at any signs that their apocalyptic pronouncements are premature at best. To those who chime in only to specify why and how were are doomed, operating under the assumption that imminent doom is a foregone conclusion: Have fun working each other up an then commiserating with one another about it.
My spotty sense of UK inner workings doesn’t prevent me from seeing that that is what of y’all are doing, whether the topic is centered in the States (as it very often is) or not.
History Part Un…The nature of political governance in the UK underwent a profound still little understood (evidently :)) in the late 1990s. Two forces converged to totally shatter the old democratic model of a strong Executive and powerful Parliament leading a nation state. Tony Blair called it constitutional ‘modernisation’ and it involved the creation of permanent unelected institutions and the deliberate dismantling of centralized political authority. This – not by coincidence – was also designed (though never ever acknowledged) to fulfill the strategic wishes of the recently Federalised new EU to better bend the nation states within its embrace to its will. You may have heard of the Supreme Court…a small thing called devolution…NMIs…what we call the Regulatory Quangocracy or Technocracy. Rhey are rather hard to miss. Please observe who runs the NHS (not the Minister) and who sets our interest rates. Perhaps you might also have read about the unelected permanent judges here and (unseen secretv ones somewhere in Europe) plus the unelected House of Lords which includes inc 80 plus scraggy useless unelected Lib Democrats who do not even have a rugby team in the elected Commons..Democracy Huh?!) all shredding and undermining the Executive and people majority will to stop criminal people traffickers and illegal immigration. This is the permanent unelected elite which was supposed to be neutral and to stop the curse of short termism of venal politicians. But it turns out they were venal and shite too. And – as the b*****d kinder of Labour – they all turned out to suck at the progressive teat too. Oh dear. So we now have an unlected Blob sitting atop a weakened Parliament and the result is paralysis and chaos (Net Zero – Housing – Energy – Welfare – Public Health you name it) Ahistorical? Balls. Hyberbolic? If you were experiencing what we are experiencing you might want to re-think that too.
Hyperbole squared. But your consistent condescension does lend a substitute balance your rant.
Do you think I inhabit an altogether different zeitgeist and social and experiential universe here in California? Please don’t say yes. “Long-term, calcified elite” maybe?
I’m genuinely sorry things are so bad there. Perhaps you can feel a bit of sympathy or at least pity for us Americans too. I’d like to be able to persuade you that the current (hemispheric, global) mess is neither as thin on hope nor uniquely bad compared to all previous history as it may seem, but you treat my sincere (if doomed to fall flat) opinions as an insult or outrage. I didn’t mean to darken an already somber mood nor deny your legitimate sense of worry and anguish. I’m thin on hope and resilience sometimes too. I hope you have a good day.
Dear AJ. Aha!! I actuallly enjoy your posts and that ouch! riposte made me smile :)). I did not know for sure that you were from America. I most certainly pity you the rage and pain that the super charged version of the Progressive/CRT mind virus is causing in America. My venom is reserved for the cold eyed illberal Elect here; the property rich detached new Soviet style Clerisy I have described above. There is such deep ignorance HERE of the political revolution to our system of governance (New Labour/New EU 1990s on) which we have endured and how it has embedded the power of unelected elites layered atop not just the people, but even the elected Parliament itself!!!! So different from constitutional set up and cultural backdrop for the battles over there. I do not feel qualified to comment on the grounds for optimism you write of, though by nature I am no pessimist. It is simply that when the High Ground of State media, Law, Culture and Education have all been ‘turned’, and political resistance to Progressive dogma even by a passive supposed Tory ‘Government’ can be so easily neutured internally or externally (do watch the small boat story), then you will see why several of us cannot yet see the light. We are still undergoing The Fall.
Thank you for a fair reply, Walter. I like and respect your input and I’m glad we can leave it on a friendlier footing. I don’t think my “stubborn refusal to see little or no hope” is equivalent to Leibnitz or Candide-like optimism, but fair enough on that front too. May better days reach all our (receding) shores.
Thank you for a fair reply, Walter. I like and respect your input and I’m glad we can leave it on a friendlier footing. I don’t think my “stubborn refusal to see little or no hope” is equivalent to Leibnitz or Candide-like optimism, but fair enough on that front too. May better days reach all our (receding) shores.
Dear AJ. Aha!! I actuallly enjoy your posts and that ouch! riposte made me smile :)). I did not know for sure that you were from America. I most certainly pity you the rage and pain that the super charged version of the Progressive/CRT mind virus is causing in America. My venom is reserved for the cold eyed illberal Elect here; the property rich detached new Soviet style Clerisy I have described above. There is such deep ignorance HERE of the political revolution to our system of governance (New Labour/New EU 1990s on) which we have endured and how it has embedded the power of unelected elites layered atop not just the people, but even the elected Parliament itself!!!! So different from constitutional set up and cultural backdrop for the battles over there. I do not feel qualified to comment on the grounds for optimism you write of, though by nature I am no pessimist. It is simply that when the High Ground of State media, Law, Culture and Education have all been ‘turned’, and political resistance to Progressive dogma even by a passive supposed Tory ‘Government’ can be so easily neutured internally or externally (do watch the small boat story), then you will see why several of us cannot yet see the light. We are still undergoing The Fall.
Hyperbole squared. But your consistent condescension does lend a substitute balance your rant.
Do you think I inhabit an altogether different zeitgeist and social and experiential universe here in California? Please don’t say yes. “Long-term, calcified elite” maybe?
I’m genuinely sorry things are so bad there. Perhaps you can feel a bit of sympathy or at least pity for us Americans too. I’d like to be able to persuade you that the current (hemispheric, global) mess is neither as thin on hope nor uniquely bad compared to all previous history as it may seem, but you treat my sincere (if doomed to fall flat) opinions as an insult or outrage. I didn’t mean to darken an already somber mood nor deny your legitimate sense of worry and anguish. I’m thin on hope and resilience sometimes too. I hope you have a good day.
“… permanent elite wedded to wokeness” sounds both ahistorical and hyperbolic …”
Your “very little knowledge of UK specifics” is evident from your statement!
History Part Un…The nature of political governance in the UK underwent a profound still little understood (evidently :)) in the late 1990s. Two forces converged to totally shatter the old democratic model of a strong Executive and powerful Parliament leading a nation state. Tony Blair called it constitutional ‘modernisation’ and it involved the creation of permanent unelected institutions and the deliberate dismantling of centralized political authority. This – not by coincidence – was also designed (though never ever acknowledged) to fulfill the strategic wishes of the recently Federalised new EU to better bend the nation states within its embrace to its will. You may have heard of the Supreme Court…a small thing called devolution…NMIs…what we call the Regulatory Quangocracy or Technocracy. Rhey are rather hard to miss. Please observe who runs the NHS (not the Minister) and who sets our interest rates. Perhaps you might also have read about the unelected permanent judges here and (unseen secretv ones somewhere in Europe) plus the unelected House of Lords which includes inc 80 plus scraggy useless unelected Lib Democrats who do not even have a rugby team in the elected Commons..Democracy Huh?!) all shredding and undermining the Executive and people majority will to stop criminal people traffickers and illegal immigration. This is the permanent unelected elite which was supposed to be neutral and to stop the curse of short termism of venal politicians. But it turns out they were venal and shite too. And – as the b*****d kinder of Labour – they all turned out to suck at the progressive teat too. Oh dear. So we now have an unlected Blob sitting atop a weakened Parliament and the result is paralysis and chaos (Net Zero – Housing – Energy – Welfare – Public Health you name it) Ahistorical? Balls. Hyberbolic? If you were experiencing what we are experiencing you might want to re-think that too.
I agree that in most Western “democracies,” the big decisions are most often left to unelected regulators. However, these “experts” have a problem with reality, as their solutions often fail.
Let’s look at the practicality of net zero, the stated goal of climate alarmists. Please note that most software or engineering projects have a test or pilot project phase to make sure the proposed solution actually works. Where’s the net zero test or pilot project? Sri Lanka? Without affordable energy storage, net zero is a one way ticket to poverty and starvation. As even the strongest European Greens are finding out, you need natural gas from somewhere to make it work. “Sustainable” wind and solar are part time sources,and they set their own hours. On winter nights without wind, you freeze in the dark. Where in the world is their demonstration project?
In Sri Lanka, the government fell when outlawing chemical fertilizer caused widespread crop failure, bankrupting the country. Similar dramatic failures will result in violent pushback by the people. In the long run, the regulators have to lose, because they are the enemies of civilization.
I have very little knowledge of UK specifics.
But your description of a “permanent elite wedded to wokeness” sounds both ahistorical and hyperbolic to me. Why permanent? How deeply espoused are they?
You’ve set some threshold for “pushback” that sounds more like “victory”. These ideological conflicts will rage and subside, flare-up and ebb for all foreseeble time. This is not some un-faceable threat, nor is it truly new in degree or kind (arguable, but that’s my stance).
The fact that woke orthodoxy is so serious and daunting–though also quite ridiculous in many cases–makes it all the more important to remain hopeful and be strong in opposition. And to resist demonizing those among the seeming zombies who might be reached–more than many admit or even imagine, I am convinced.
I’m not saying it is fine, let it go. I’m insisting that individual and grass-roots acts of courage and good-faith engagement are valuable, and can have massive ripple effects. Despair doesn’t become a better choice in times of great crisis. Hope doesn’t become less necessary.
I agree that in most Western “democracies,” the big decisions are most often left to unelected regulators. However, these “experts” have a problem with reality, as their solutions often fail.
Let’s look at the practicality of net zero, the stated goal of climate alarmists. Please note that most software or engineering projects have a test or pilot project phase to make sure the proposed solution actually works. Where’s the net zero test or pilot project? Sri Lanka? Without affordable energy storage, net zero is a one way ticket to poverty and starvation. As even the strongest European Greens are finding out, you need natural gas from somewhere to make it work. “Sustainable” wind and solar are part time sources,and they set their own hours. On winter nights without wind, you freeze in the dark. Where in the world is their demonstration project?
In Sri Lanka, the government fell when outlawing chemical fertilizer caused widespread crop failure, bankrupting the country. Similar dramatic failures will result in violent pushback by the people. In the long run, the regulators have to lose, because they are the enemies of civilization.
I think the widespread despair is at least partly the result of the climate change doomsday cult. If the world is going to die in 20 years, and we keep missing the deadlines, there’s no hope for powerless fervent believers. The anxiety is constantly maintained by increasingly emotionally charged sales pitches for doom around the corner.
For example: The latest word salad is “climate breakdown.”
Here comes your 19th climate breakdown!
Not quite the Rolling Stones, but brought to you with more condescension by Global Warming “Experts.” Yes, it’s a climate breakdown, because climate catastrophe didn’t scare you enough. You have to remember that the “experts” pushing this are following “the science,” models that have predicted over twice the temperature increases than those that have actually occurred. They may be a little short on science and statistical significance for their models, but they have a thesaurus! If you ain’t scared of climate breakdown, they will look for an even scarier term, so please be really scared now, or they’ll double your order!
Agree. It is easy to despair but a push back is developing. It could go either way.
I think the key will be the reemergence of thoughtful public debate. Woke ideas will struggle if exposed to scrutiny and argument; the more loopy or malign aspects will fall by the wayside while the better impulses survive.
One historical comparison is with McCarthyism which was horrifying, appeared irresistible but ultimately proved transient.
Maybe the dominant communication technology of the 2010s was Twitter but that of the 2020s will be podcasts. If so, I suspect we will be better off.
We can agree that there is resistance; the vast majority of silent majority people in the UK are bewildered and hostile to the so called woke ideology. But ‘pushback’ requires power and that power is now exercised largely above the people and sits outside of the weakened parliamentary/democratic sphere by a detached permanent unelected elite army of judges lawyers regulators and technocrats – Bank of E NHS PHE and more. And THEY and the ahabby politicos of all psrties have signed up for many years to a revolutionary set of ideas – NONE of which have the consent of the people. Net Zero? Barely had 90 min ‘debate’. Uncontrolled legal and illegal migration? People said NO. Blob said YES. Lockdown consent? I think not. Polite discourse within the civic space is all well and good. But in a classic Leninist way, the Progressives have taken command all institutions within our law media education and culture, fortified by the equality mania written into State law. How are you/we ever going to pushback against a permanent elite wedded to these ideologies? Not even a Tory Government with 80 seat maj could pushback. On the contrary, the Fool Johnson & Treasury Stoodge Rishi accelerated the Socialist bailouts and NHS Worship splurging , said ugh no to lower taxation, waved in 1.2m legals, backed ESG and Net Zero nutcasery and have left the fight versus the crazies to JKR and a few brave individuals. Where do you see hope in this reality??
I think the widespread despair is at least partly the result of the climate change doomsday cult. If the world is going to die in 20 years, and we keep missing the deadlines, there’s no hope for powerless fervent believers. The anxiety is constantly maintained by increasingly emotionally charged sales pitches for doom around the corner.
For example: The latest word salad is “climate breakdown.”
Here comes your 19th climate breakdown!
Not quite the Rolling Stones, but brought to you with more condescension by Global Warming “Experts.” Yes, it’s a climate breakdown, because climate catastrophe didn’t scare you enough. You have to remember that the “experts” pushing this are following “the science,” models that have predicted over twice the temperature increases than those that have actually occurred. They may be a little short on science and statistical significance for their models, but they have a thesaurus! If you ain’t scared of climate breakdown, they will look for an even scarier term, so please be really scared now, or they’ll double your order!
Those Britons with fortitude won WW2, however the Kenneth Widmerpools reaped the peace 1945. The Widmerpools created the bureaucratic oligarchy which as run Britain since 1945 and it’s hatred is for the enterprising innovative individual who displays fortitude.
Kenneth Widmerpool – Wikipedia
Both communism and corporatism favours the collective over the liberty loving innovative individual.
As A Toynbee pointed out civilistion decays when the ruling class is no longer creative.The present ruling class desires power but lacks the spirit from which comes innovation and fortitude and will destroy those who display it as they are a threat to the collective which they control via a bureaucratic oligarchy. Hence O Brien must destroy Smith.
The aristocratic class of Britain did not prevent the rise of talent, hence archers fought side by side with them during the Hundred Years War. Before Poitiers The Black prince said to the archers ” If victory shall see us alive we shall always continue in firm friendship together, being of one heart and mind. and I and my comrades will drink the same cup together ” .
Widmerpool ends his career as Vice chancellor of a new university. During the ceremony he is pelted with red paint but immediately identifies with the demonstrators and becomes a central figure in the counter-culture movement.
A country led by someone with the spirit of the Black Prince rises, one with the spirit of Widmerpool declines.
All true. But Widmerpool was given his opportunity by the preceding generation which included a fair number of communist sleepers and agents of influence – think of the unlovely collection of ideologues in Roosevelt’s inner circle. In truth, the left has been attempting the subversion and destruction of free and settled societies for at least a century. There has been no let up nor will there be.
Well put. Ever since the Comintern was founded in 1919, much of the midle class left wing has been involved in subversion. Orwell explains all in his essays of the late 1930s to 1940s, hence the novels Animal Farm and 1984.
Those who fought hardest against the Comintern was the working class Non Conformist Christians of ther Labour Party; Ernie Bevin( Baptist Preacher ) fought the Communists in the docks of Bristol to keep them out in the 1920s and 1930s.
Well put. Ever since the Comintern was founded in 1919, much of the midle class left wing has been involved in subversion. Orwell explains all in his essays of the late 1930s to 1940s, hence the novels Animal Farm and 1984.
Those who fought hardest against the Comintern was the working class Non Conformist Christians of ther Labour Party; Ernie Bevin( Baptist Preacher ) fought the Communists in the docks of Bristol to keep them out in the 1920s and 1930s.
All true. But Widmerpool was given his opportunity by the preceding generation which included a fair number of communist sleepers and agents of influence – think of the unlovely collection of ideologues in Roosevelt’s inner circle. In truth, the left has been attempting the subversion and destruction of free and settled societies for at least a century. There has been no let up nor will there be.
“It is, as far as ethnic Europeans are concerned, a systematised process of self-hatred.”
Worse. It [the woke belief system] is an intellectualised framework of blatant racism that seeks to undermine or, better, destroy every aspect of European identity and heritage, and which is sanctioned and nurtured by the law.
I too am in despair!
Well said. It is so important to reference and learn from the religious convulsions and terror of the 16th century & Reformation. All of the same tremours are being felt today. The Progressive EDI ideology is a direct culty offshoot of the puritanical Calvanist Elect, making thought a crime and seeking to purify and scourge society. Everyone recognises the repellent moral superiority of the Diversity Industry charlatans and Just Stop Oil creeps. But sadly we are missing the most scary fact about them. In this Elect/Higher Moral worldview, there are only two groups – the Chosen and the Righteous Few…. and those who are without Virtue and not chosen; the Damned. The reason why our Elite have been punishing the poor and working classes so hard – esp the oiky uneducated Brexiteers of the decaying North – is not really a secret, though they cannot ever say it. They are fully aware of the suffering that comes from turning blind eyes to islamist ‘its love really’ terror, the evil grooming gangs, rampant street crime, the crippling multiple pressures on a creaking public sector stoked by decades of mass uncontrolled immigration or the more recebr tyranny of a catastrophic lockdown & Net Zero Ulez bullying. They know. But this New Elect – immune from these punitive shocks by their million pound capital gain property heist – really do not CARE. They do not care for those who deny their Truth and ideology. They despise them. That is, they actually despise us, the silent majority of people. Study the History. Study the Religion.
I disagree. I think there is robust, growing pushback against attempts at hard-left indoctrination. A major U.S. presidential candidate has made these educational culture wars central to his campaign and Kathleen Stock is developing a growing platform in the wake of her wrongful dismissal. The center-left former president Barack Obama made a forceful and impactful case against wokeism, call-out culture, and judgmental self-certainty in general a few years ago. For those who can get past the forum (Guardian News) and messenger, his remarks are quite heartening, I think. It’s about two minutes long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
But for those who think Obama is hard-left, or an idiot, we live in different perceived realities and will have to find other things to agree on, if there’s any mutual willingness to find consensus and understanding elsewhere.
To me, the widespread despair you all-too-correctly diagnose is not primarily the result of ideology, but: wired -in isolation, lack of purpose, economic hardship and uncertainty, and mutual hostility given exacerbating support by the informational bubbles so many of us live in. Too many preemptively deny the good intentions and possible intelligence of those who disagree with them about politics or culture. The pandemic & its aftermath and quality of our recent leaders–on both sides of the aisle and “sides of the pond”–have increased our overall frustration & despair too.
If the hard-left has decisively won some ideological zero-sum war: Why are most presidential elections damn near 50-50% (or 47-45, etc.)?
For exemplary instances of pushback from within institutional or “elite” pockets of U.S. society, check out: Heterodox Academy, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), and persuasion.community
Those Britons with fortitude won WW2, however the Kenneth Widmerpools reaped the peace 1945. The Widmerpools created the bureaucratic oligarchy which as run Britain since 1945 and it’s hatred is for the enterprising innovative individual who displays fortitude.
Kenneth Widmerpool – Wikipedia
Both communism and corporatism favours the collective over the liberty loving innovative individual.
As A Toynbee pointed out civilistion decays when the ruling class is no longer creative.The present ruling class desires power but lacks the spirit from which comes innovation and fortitude and will destroy those who display it as they are a threat to the collective which they control via a bureaucratic oligarchy. Hence O Brien must destroy Smith.
The aristocratic class of Britain did not prevent the rise of talent, hence archers fought side by side with them during the Hundred Years War. Before Poitiers The Black prince said to the archers ” If victory shall see us alive we shall always continue in firm friendship together, being of one heart and mind. and I and my comrades will drink the same cup together ” .
Widmerpool ends his career as Vice chancellor of a new university. During the ceremony he is pelted with red paint but immediately identifies with the demonstrators and becomes a central figure in the counter-culture movement.
A country led by someone with the spirit of the Black Prince rises, one with the spirit of Widmerpool declines.
“It is, as far as ethnic Europeans are concerned, a systematised process of self-hatred.”
Worse. It [the woke belief system] is an intellectualised framework of blatant racism that seeks to undermine or, better, destroy every aspect of European identity and heritage, and which is sanctioned and nurtured by the law.
I too am in despair!
The really worrying thing now is that the onward momentum of hard left indoctrination is beginning to crush even inner resistance. We’ve heard for years of cancelled academics getting secret messages of support from disaffected but cowardly colleagues. Now, those messages are drying up and people are internalising and accepting the madness.
To live “against the world” is a tough business and only potential martyrs or natural loners can sustain it over decades – especially if most of their lives remain to be lived. If you can’t beat ’em and so on.
This is a very usual process. By the 1570s most hold out Catholics in England would have traipsed off to morning prayer. By the ninth century AD most middle eastern Christians would have opted for Islam, just as the pagans before them had opted for Christianity.
But the belief system which is currently taking over the public mind is – we have to recall – both sinister and insane. It is, as far as ethnic Europeans are concerned, a systematised process of self-hatred. Beyond that, it is a complete denial of anything resembling objective reality, in the place of which it settles an authoritarian relativism. It is literally Orwellian: “How many fingers am I holding up?” asks O’Brien, to which the answer is: however many “the party” says there are. Substitute for O’Brien’s question something such as: “Is this a man or a woman, Winston?” and the point will become clear.
The public may indeed be suspicious, discontented, unhappy – deeply, deeply unhappy – but they remain quiescent and powerless. Society is in despair.
I completed a Philosophy PhD a decade ago, and now in late middle age would very much like to return to university for an MA or research degree in Eng. Lit., but am absolutely deterred from doing so by the woke vileness of higher education. I couldn’t imagine spending two years in the company of racist misogynist child-mutilation supporters.
Fourteen years ago there was already pressure in the social sciences and psychology to ignore or suppress politically incorrect/ inconvenient results despite desperation for new and original research. Probably a consequence of the sense the academic staff (mostly women) had that they were moral arbiters of society. There was a sense attempting to publish politically inconvenient results would not only destroy a career but would also taint the researcher for life. The researcher could expect to be treated by academia in a similar way Galileo was treated by the church for publishing his results. Not that the church elites disagreed with Galileo’s results, they just believed the faith of the masses (their power base) would be undermined should they be exposed to his findings. Those to whom truth matters wouldn’t/ won’t seek a career in the social sciences or psychology. The situation was destined to worsen and drag in other departments. It’s not surprising the political bias in academia is now so extreme.
Fellow students from my sixth form went to an open day at Sussex University. We asked questions of the National Union of Students rep and an academic who subjected us to a marxist diatribe; it was pure ” History Man”. Nobody applied to Sussex.
Someone I knew went to Sussex to read history who had Conservative views and boxed and played rugby. He left because no matter how good his work, the Marxist academics would never give the correct marks. The punishment dished out to Stark at Sussex has been common to anyone who was Liberal or Conservative ever since the new universities were created in the late 1960s.
The History Man – Wikipedia
That is precisely why I am extremely dubious of Kathleen Stock. She chose to work at and was happily ensconced in Sussex University until her book was published. I suspect the reaction to her book and the lack of support from her colleagues came as quite a shock. Kathleen Stock describes herself as a feminist philosopher and wants people to know she is a lesbian so probably a lesbian, feminist philosopher which not so long ago would have placed her top of the tree at Sussex. A feminist philosopher is an oxymoron. A philosopher follows an argument wherever it leads. A feminist seeks arguments that support the feminist position.
I would like to know when Kathleen Stock decided to be a lesbian instead of heterosexual. She had a husband (and children I think). She herself has stated that woke journalists who write for the guardian are more likely to listen to her as she is a lesbian plus despite going to Oxford she retained her local accent: better prospects for becoming a presenter on TV or radio maybe. Her lesbianism seems extremely politically expedient to me. There is research to suggest that women’s sexuality has a much greater social component than men’s and is consequently far more malleable by social forces. Julie Bindel claims to have chosen to be a lesbian. Kathleen Stock has a large following on Unherd so my point of view is extremely unpopular with many readers but I strongly believe truth matters absolutely or not at all and I opt for absolutely.
I congratulate you on having the courage to make these points, although I refrain from endorsing them outright. The underlying broader argument, however, is important. We on the right must remember that the likes of Rowling and Stock are allies of convenience or necessity. We need their help in resisting the hard left – they, after all, know the enemy very well indeed. On the other hand, they need us to supply a degree of support, even refuge. But we should never forget that in happier and better times we were able to articulate a whole range of ideas which subjected “feminism” itself to hostile scrutiny. After all, it is an essentially Marxist ideology, taking women as an “oppressed class”; it is in many ways hostile to nature and ideas of nature; it has helped to undermine the family and has colonised traditional religious institutions – think “women priests”. Many such “feminists” have only discovered the importance of freedom and academic freedom in particular when they have been hounded out by former associates. So yes, by all means, let us be on our guard and never lose touch with the deep premises and multiple expressions of our own outlook.
Certainly you’re entitled to your opinionated outspokenness. But your firm beliefs on a variety of subjects do not rise to a level of absolute truth. I guess you know that. If not, that’s an absolute misfortune.
Did Kathleen Stock also lose her professorship on purpose, to gain popularity above that which comes from being a mannish-looking lesbian philosopher?
You fluctuate between being sycophantic and offensive. You are precisely the type that supports cancel culture when someone expresses an opinion you dislike. If you disagree with any of the points I have made then produce a reasoned argument against them. I never mentioned absolute truth which is an ideal. You come across as a petulant attention seeker. Your response suggests you have not even read my comment properly. You were probably too enraged I had the audacity to even express it.
You are consistently negative, with fluctuations of arrogance and offensiveness. Well done. You have expressed knee-jerk opinions, not “arguments”, just like your nationwide characterization of Canadians as two-faced: “I think it, I say it, QED…try to refute my argument!” Waste of time. You have such contempt for so many ands it seethes from your comments, under the banner of a Fount of Wisdom. I am not enraged, but dismayed.
Attempting consensus and charitable interpretation of others’ actions is not false or untruthful, Aphrodite. It’s true I fail at charitable assessment and courtesy, but I ‘d rather be inconsistent than all dark all the time.
The only things I have ever seen you agree with are negative and condemnatory. That must not be 100% true, but it’s getting there.
there was an Unherd article on national characteristic a day or two after I made the comments so I am not the only one who identifies them. I do find conversation with you tedious.I couldn’t be bothered to reply to a question you asked me beneath a previous article. I thought you were very patronising towards Charles whose comments I enjoy though frequently disagree with. I was going to comment on your patronising comment but then couldn’t be bothered. Sorry. If you think all my comments are negative, you haven’t read them all. I find are exchanges neither enjoyable nor interesting.
On one thing, we can at last agree. You “bothered” after all tho, haven’t you. Buh bye and good luck with all that.
On one thing, we can at last agree. You “bothered” after all tho, haven’t you. Buh bye and good luck with all that.
there was an Unherd article on national characteristic a day or two after I made the comments so I am not the only one who identifies them. I do find conversation with you tedious.I couldn’t be bothered to reply to a question you asked me beneath a previous article. I thought you were very patronising towards Charles whose comments I enjoy though frequently disagree with. I was going to comment on your patronising comment but then couldn’t be bothered. Sorry. If you think all my comments are negative, you haven’t read them all. I find are exchanges neither enjoyable nor interesting.
You are consistently negative, with fluctuations of arrogance and offensiveness. Well done. You have expressed knee-jerk opinions, not “arguments”, just like your nationwide characterization of Canadians as two-faced: “I think it, I say it, QED…try to refute my argument!” Waste of time. You have such contempt for so many ands it seethes from your comments, under the banner of a Fount of Wisdom. I am not enraged, but dismayed.
Attempting consensus and charitable interpretation of others’ actions is not false or untruthful, Aphrodite. It’s true I fail at charitable assessment and courtesy, but I ‘d rather be inconsistent than all dark all the time.
The only things I have ever seen you agree with are negative and condemnatory. That must not be 100% true, but it’s getting there.
I think it was the Niemoller situation with Stark and Rowling.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Not many people supporting Conservative thought at Sussex since it was founded or at many new universities.
A friend’s son suffered anti semitism at York university a few years ago abd this is common at many other universities.
What is crucial about Widmerpool is he avoided combat in WW2 yet becomes a full colonel while someone from his school who is fighting undercover in an occupied country is murdered because of his actions. Widmerpool denies responsibility. Dance to the music of Time was written by A Powell, a friend of Blair who also associated with M Muggeridge. These three writer are the only ones who perceive Communism and Nazism are the reverse sides of the same coin and both worship power.
Powell’s twelve novels written between 1951 and 1975 but set in the period of late 1920s to mid 1970s capture very well the decline in the spirit of the British ruling class.
The Sussex University of Stark was created and run by the Widmerpools of Britain.
A Dance to the Music of Time – Wikipedia
Charles Northcote Parkinson saw very well the direction of travel of universities in the late 1950s which is why he ridiculed them in his books Parkinson’s Law , Law of Profits and In Laws and Out laws, which made him a fortune, became a tax exile and earned the malice of the academic world.
Orwell saw through the Left wing Middle Class as early as 1939 to 1940, read vol 1 of his essays , try ” The Limit to Pessimism , My Country Right or Left “.
I’ll re-read it. Thanks.
*I can’t find “The limit to Pessisims” in my 1370 page volume of Orwell’s Essays, nor access a version at Google Scholar or my university’s library. (In outward form it’s a review of something by Malcolm Muggeridge, correct?)
But I re-read “My Country Left or Right” with interest. I admire that Orwell’s leftism didn’t prevent his scathing critiques of much leftward insanity. His contrarianism is something I share with him, often to excess (don’t want to surrender it, trying to cut down).
I’m guessing you admire this concluding passage: “the spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues, for which, however little the boiled rabbits of the Left may like them, no substitute has yet been found”.
True enough. Bye for now, Mr. Hedges.
Try Penguin Collected essays of Orwell pub 1970, 4 volumes 1920-40, 40-43, 43-45, 45-50.Limit to Pessimism p585.
Comment on Muggeridge. “Muggeridge does not want to see England conquered by Germany. M has left Ministry of Information and joined the army, athing which none of the ex warmongers of the left has done.( auden and Isherwood fled to the USA). In the moment of a crisis that he is patriot after all. It is very well to be advanced and enlightened, to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional values. A time come when the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee england, my England? It is comelier thing than the shallow self- righteousness of the left wing intelligentsia.
Jack kennedy said “Do not ask what the country can do for you but ask what what you can do for the country”.
The left wing middle class replied ” Sweet Fanny Adams “.
Try Penguin Collected essays of Orwell pub 1970, 4 volumes 1920-40, 40-43, 43-45, 45-50.Limit to Pessimism p585.
Comment on Muggeridge. “Muggeridge does not want to see England conquered by Germany. M has left Ministry of Information and joined the army, athing which none of the ex warmongers of the left has done.( auden and Isherwood fled to the USA). In the moment of a crisis that he is patriot after all. It is very well to be advanced and enlightened, to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional values. A time come when the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee england, my England? It is comelier thing than the shallow self- righteousness of the left wing intelligentsia.
Jack kennedy said “Do not ask what the country can do for you but ask what what you can do for the country”.
The left wing middle class replied ” Sweet Fanny Adams “.
*I can’t find “The limit to Pessisims” in my 1370 page volume of Orwell’s Essays, nor access a version at Google Scholar or my university’s library. (In outward form it’s a review of something by Malcolm Muggeridge, correct?)
But I re-read “My Country Left or Right” with interest. I admire that Orwell’s leftism didn’t prevent his scathing critiques of much leftward insanity. His contrarianism is something I share with him, often to excess (don’t want to surrender it, trying to cut down).
I’m guessing you admire this concluding passage: “the spiritual need for patriotism and the military virtues, for which, however little the boiled rabbits of the Left may like them, no substitute has yet been found”.
True enough. Bye for now, Mr. Hedges.
As to the 12-volume cycle of novels you cited, I’ve done the “wiki intro” but I don’t think I’ll be cracking them any time soon.
I’ll re-read it. Thanks.
As to the 12-volume cycle of novels you cited, I’ve done the “wiki intro” but I don’t think I’ll be cracking them any time soon.
You fluctuate between being sycophantic and offensive. You are precisely the type that supports cancel culture when someone expresses an opinion you dislike. If you disagree with any of the points I have made then produce a reasoned argument against them. I never mentioned absolute truth which is an ideal. You come across as a petulant attention seeker. Your response suggests you have not even read my comment properly. You were probably too enraged I had the audacity to even express it.
I think it was the Niemoller situation with Stark and Rowling.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Not many people supporting Conservative thought at Sussex since it was founded or at many new universities.
A friend’s son suffered anti semitism at York university a few years ago abd this is common at many other universities.
What is crucial about Widmerpool is he avoided combat in WW2 yet becomes a full colonel while someone from his school who is fighting undercover in an occupied country is murdered because of his actions. Widmerpool denies responsibility. Dance to the music of Time was written by A Powell, a friend of Blair who also associated with M Muggeridge. These three writer are the only ones who perceive Communism and Nazism are the reverse sides of the same coin and both worship power.
Powell’s twelve novels written between 1951 and 1975 but set in the period of late 1920s to mid 1970s capture very well the decline in the spirit of the British ruling class.
The Sussex University of Stark was created and run by the Widmerpools of Britain.
A Dance to the Music of Time – Wikipedia
Charles Northcote Parkinson saw very well the direction of travel of universities in the late 1950s which is why he ridiculed them in his books Parkinson’s Law , Law of Profits and In Laws and Out laws, which made him a fortune, became a tax exile and earned the malice of the academic world.
Orwell saw through the Left wing Middle Class as early as 1939 to 1940, read vol 1 of his essays , try ” The Limit to Pessimism , My Country Right or Left “.
..a philosopher follows an argument wherever it leads…’ – is that quite right? Philosophers, like politicians and greengrocers, have opinions, though they may test them more rigorously than the rest of us. Having a strong tendency (perhaps picked up in infancy and youth) towards the legitimacy of inherited wealth may make you one sort of philosopher, a youth spent in grinding poverty may make you another kind. Otherwise, surely, all philosophers would be monadologists or Cartesians? We can leave neutrality to the mathematicians*.
Absolute truth, I have to add, is not a likely nor a historical consequence of truth mattering absolutely. I would surmise the reverse is true.
* well, we used to be able to – cf Sokal and the Social Text hoax.
I congratulate you on having the courage to make these points, although I refrain from endorsing them outright. The underlying broader argument, however, is important. We on the right must remember that the likes of Rowling and Stock are allies of convenience or necessity. We need their help in resisting the hard left – they, after all, know the enemy very well indeed. On the other hand, they need us to supply a degree of support, even refuge. But we should never forget that in happier and better times we were able to articulate a whole range of ideas which subjected “feminism” itself to hostile scrutiny. After all, it is an essentially Marxist ideology, taking women as an “oppressed class”; it is in many ways hostile to nature and ideas of nature; it has helped to undermine the family and has colonised traditional religious institutions – think “women priests”. Many such “feminists” have only discovered the importance of freedom and academic freedom in particular when they have been hounded out by former associates. So yes, by all means, let us be on our guard and never lose touch with the deep premises and multiple expressions of our own outlook.
Certainly you’re entitled to your opinionated outspokenness. But your firm beliefs on a variety of subjects do not rise to a level of absolute truth. I guess you know that. If not, that’s an absolute misfortune.
Did Kathleen Stock also lose her professorship on purpose, to gain popularity above that which comes from being a mannish-looking lesbian philosopher?
..a philosopher follows an argument wherever it leads…’ – is that quite right? Philosophers, like politicians and greengrocers, have opinions, though they may test them more rigorously than the rest of us. Having a strong tendency (perhaps picked up in infancy and youth) towards the legitimacy of inherited wealth may make you one sort of philosopher, a youth spent in grinding poverty may make you another kind. Otherwise, surely, all philosophers would be monadologists or Cartesians? We can leave neutrality to the mathematicians*.
Absolute truth, I have to add, is not a likely nor a historical consequence of truth mattering absolutely. I would surmise the reverse is true.
* well, we used to be able to – cf Sokal and the Social Text hoax.
That is precisely why I am extremely dubious of Kathleen Stock. She chose to work at and was happily ensconced in Sussex University until her book was published. I suspect the reaction to her book and the lack of support from her colleagues came as quite a shock. Kathleen Stock describes herself as a feminist philosopher and wants people to know she is a lesbian so probably a lesbian, feminist philosopher which not so long ago would have placed her top of the tree at Sussex. A feminist philosopher is an oxymoron. A philosopher follows an argument wherever it leads. A feminist seeks arguments that support the feminist position.
I would like to know when Kathleen Stock decided to be a lesbian instead of heterosexual. She had a husband (and children I think). She herself has stated that woke journalists who write for the guardian are more likely to listen to her as she is a lesbian plus despite going to Oxford she retained her local accent: better prospects for becoming a presenter on TV or radio maybe. Her lesbianism seems extremely politically expedient to me. There is research to suggest that women’s sexuality has a much greater social component than men’s and is consequently far more malleable by social forces. Julie Bindel claims to have chosen to be a lesbian. Kathleen Stock has a large following on Unherd so my point of view is extremely unpopular with many readers but I strongly believe truth matters absolutely or not at all and I opt for absolutely.
I don’t think you’d find nearly so many as you fear of that description, among graduate students at least. Although if a mere whiff of wokery or vapidly “inclusive” discussion elicits your full contempt, you probably would find it insufferable.
I think an infiltration by an intelligent and opinionated traditionalist (fair?) could be just what some English department needs, or at least deserves. Weren’t there blinkered far-lefties of an earlier vintage in the Philosophy wing when you took your doctorate earlier this century?
English Literature has undergone major changes. For instance, the medieval period is now referred to as the Antifeminist Period in some textbooks. Almost all literature is looked at through the lens of patriarchy, colonialism, or oppression, which is why enrollment numbers for English are dropping, particularly among the brighter students who will most likely study something that will earn them high salaries later on.
The problem within academia is that Critical Theory has become conflated with Critical Thinking. The two are almost diametrically opposed, but many students (and professors) confuse the two.
As someone who just came through a graduate English dept., I agree with your observation about Critical Theory or hostile critical lenses being given far too much weight, without enough balance or counterweight.
You will have to ingest more of that self-impressed junk than anyone should ever have too, true. But I think there are ways around that and I’d think graduate-level Medieval Studies would be comparatively free of such ideological severity. I’ve sure never encountered the revisionist term Antifeminist Period. Was that in a Queer Theory or History of Women textbook?
I suggest you research Rachel Fulton Brown and how she has been treated by the woke in medieval studies. Fortunately, Chicago University stood by her right to freedom of speech.
So her case is one in which a stubborn hope-denialist would almost have to admit that there is significant resistance to (if not “pushback” against) cancel-happy woke fever.
So her case is one in which a stubborn hope-denialist would almost have to admit that there is significant resistance to (if not “pushback” against) cancel-happy woke fever.
I suggest you research Rachel Fulton Brown and how she has been treated by the woke in medieval studies. Fortunately, Chicago University stood by her right to freedom of speech.
As someone who just came through a graduate English dept., I agree with your observation about Critical Theory or hostile critical lenses being given far too much weight, without enough balance or counterweight.
You will have to ingest more of that self-impressed junk than anyone should ever have too, true. But I think there are ways around that and I’d think graduate-level Medieval Studies would be comparatively free of such ideological severity. I’ve sure never encountered the revisionist term Antifeminist Period. Was that in a Queer Theory or History of Women textbook?
“Although if a mere whiff of wokery or vapidly “inclusive” discussion elicits your full contempt, you probably would find it insufferable.”
I suffer from high blood pressure. Exposure to anti-white racism and the advocacy of sadistic paedophilia has a measurable effect on my health, and I would be genuinely worried about having a stroke or a heart attack.
“Weren’t there blinkered far-lefties of an earlier vintage in the Philosophy wing when you took your doctorate earlier this century?”
The Philo dept. was predominantly left wing, but I never encountered any problem with being entirely open about my centre-right views.
Ok but where in academic work do you encounter “advocacy of sadistic paedophilia”–(the less acknowledged actions of Foucault you mean?). Go to those halls and confront them while keeping your temper as much as possible. Easy for me to say though, having just escaped that environment. You must have the wherewithal to write a book, partly about what you are in favor of, by now. *(Perhaps you have already done so, I meant). Cheers.
Ok but where in academic work do you encounter “advocacy of sadistic paedophilia”–(the less acknowledged actions of Foucault you mean?). Go to those halls and confront them while keeping your temper as much as possible. Easy for me to say though, having just escaped that environment. You must have the wherewithal to write a book, partly about what you are in favor of, by now. *(Perhaps you have already done so, I meant). Cheers.
English Literature has undergone major changes. For instance, the medieval period is now referred to as the Antifeminist Period in some textbooks. Almost all literature is looked at through the lens of patriarchy, colonialism, or oppression, which is why enrollment numbers for English are dropping, particularly among the brighter students who will most likely study something that will earn them high salaries later on.
The problem within academia is that Critical Theory has become conflated with Critical Thinking. The two are almost diametrically opposed, but many students (and professors) confuse the two.
“Although if a mere whiff of wokery or vapidly “inclusive” discussion elicits your full contempt, you probably would find it insufferable.”
I suffer from high blood pressure. Exposure to anti-white racism and the advocacy of sadistic paedophilia has a measurable effect on my health, and I would be genuinely worried about having a stroke or a heart attack.
“Weren’t there blinkered far-lefties of an earlier vintage in the Philosophy wing when you took your doctorate earlier this century?”
The Philo dept. was predominantly left wing, but I never encountered any problem with being entirely open about my centre-right views.
Fourteen years ago there was already pressure in the social sciences and psychology to ignore or suppress politically incorrect/ inconvenient results despite desperation for new and original research. Probably a consequence of the sense the academic staff (mostly women) had that they were moral arbiters of society. There was a sense attempting to publish politically inconvenient results would not only destroy a career but would also taint the researcher for life. The researcher could expect to be treated by academia in a similar way Galileo was treated by the church for publishing his results. Not that the church elites disagreed with Galileo’s results, they just believed the faith of the masses (their power base) would be undermined should they be exposed to his findings. Those to whom truth matters wouldn’t/ won’t seek a career in the social sciences or psychology. The situation was destined to worsen and drag in other departments. It’s not surprising the political bias in academia is now so extreme.
Fellow students from my sixth form went to an open day at Sussex University. We asked questions of the National Union of Students rep and an academic who subjected us to a marxist diatribe; it was pure ” History Man”. Nobody applied to Sussex.
Someone I knew went to Sussex to read history who had Conservative views and boxed and played rugby. He left because no matter how good his work, the Marxist academics would never give the correct marks. The punishment dished out to Stark at Sussex has been common to anyone who was Liberal or Conservative ever since the new universities were created in the late 1960s.
The History Man – Wikipedia
I don’t think you’d find nearly so many as you fear of that description, among graduate students at least. Although if a mere whiff of wokery or vapidly “inclusive” discussion elicits your full contempt, you probably would find it insufferable.
I think an infiltration by an intelligent and opinionated traditionalist (fair?) could be just what some English department needs, or at least deserves. Weren’t there blinkered far-lefties of an earlier vintage in the Philosophy wing when you took your doctorate earlier this century?
I completed a Philosophy PhD a decade ago, and now in late middle age would very much like to return to university for an MA or research degree in Eng. Lit., but am absolutely deterred from doing so by the woke vileness of higher education. I couldn’t imagine spending two years in the company of racist misogynist child-mutilation supporters.
We usually do end up copying whatever trends in America, with a few years time lag. There are plenty of excellent SSH folk, but UK unis have gone down the same route as American unis by creating lots of SSH posts for academic whingers and they are almost always the headline-grabbers.
We usually do end up copying whatever trends in America, with a few years time lag. There are plenty of excellent SSH folk, but UK unis have gone down the same route as American unis by creating lots of SSH posts for academic whingers and they are almost always the headline-grabbers.
No great surprise that a majority on the Left feel that Universities are doing a good job. Aren’t the Unis helping to propagate that inclusive, egalitarian worldview to which the Lefties expect the populace to defer?
Kaufman’s final paragraph is a bit of an odd one:
Why would anyone expect them to change course – swiftly or otherwise? Highly educated professionals certain beyond doubt of the rightness of their convictions are surely intent on teaching the society that feeds them to change its course. Change is happening in spite of a promised anti-woke pushback that shows little sign of slowing the juggernaut.
In the USA there is still a vibrant community representing the 75% (?) of the country (Republicans and Independents) who have not bought into the woke madness. They are ridiculed in state (Democrat) media as MAGA extremists, but they aren’t buying Bud Light and they aren’t shopping at Target. They also have 300 million guns between them. They aren’t going anywhere.
Let’s see…
They’re not buying Bud Light after the Mulvaney fiasco. As well as boycotting Target I guess they’re not buying tickets to see Phoebe Waller Bridge and The Dial of Destiny or any other of the Woke Hollywood product either.
Yet in spite of the risk of going broke big corporations are still trying to go Woke. Mark Moss on YouTube has some insight into why this might be. If you haven’t already seen it try this video from a couple of weeks ago:
Anyway, your ‘They’ have 300 million guns and presumably plenty of ammo so they are not to be trifled with. How might they use all this firepower?
Let’s see…
They’re not buying Bud Light after the Mulvaney fiasco. As well as boycotting Target I guess they’re not buying tickets to see Phoebe Waller Bridge and The Dial of Destiny or any other of the Woke Hollywood product either.
Yet in spite of the risk of going broke big corporations are still trying to go Woke. Mark Moss on YouTube has some insight into why this might be. If you haven’t already seen it try this video from a couple of weeks ago:
Anyway, your ‘They’ have 300 million guns and presumably plenty of ammo so they are not to be trifled with. How might they use all this firepower?
In the USA there is still a vibrant community representing the 75% (?) of the country (Republicans and Independents) who have not bought into the woke madness. They are ridiculed in state (Democrat) media as MAGA extremists, but they aren’t buying Bud Light and they aren’t shopping at Target. They also have 300 million guns between them. They aren’t going anywhere.
No great surprise that a majority on the Left feel that Universities are doing a good job. Aren’t the Unis helping to propagate that inclusive, egalitarian worldview to which the Lefties expect the populace to defer?
Kaufman’s final paragraph is a bit of an odd one:
Why would anyone expect them to change course – swiftly or otherwise? Highly educated professionals certain beyond doubt of the rightness of their convictions are surely intent on teaching the society that feeds them to change its course. Change is happening in spite of a promised anti-woke pushback that shows little sign of slowing the juggernaut.
“If British institutions had any sense, they would learn from the American experience and swiftly change course.”
The history of post-WW2 Britain’s Establishment is its predictability in enthusiastically aping every bad idea and fashion that blows across the Atlantic from the USA. Prior to WW2 Britain led the world in terms of ideas and morals.
“If British institutions had any sense, they would learn from the American experience and swiftly change course.”
The history of post-WW2 Britain’s Establishment is its predictability in enthusiastically aping every bad idea and fashion that blows across the Atlantic from the USA. Prior to WW2 Britain led the world in terms of ideas and morals.
We are flawed free willed hence spiritual rational beings created by and for love as Aquinas shows with his explication of Final Causality, the end or purpose of things that is the ordering principle of existence. The natural law common sense guys. And finite things can’t achieve infinite ends. Love , the final cause can raise us up however to the world of love which is where eternal hopes are realized.
We are flawed free willed hence spiritual rational beings created by and for love as Aquinas shows with his explication of Final Causality, the end or purpose of things that is the ordering principle of existence. The natural law common sense guys. And finite things can’t achieve infinite ends. Love , the final cause can raise us up however to the world of love which is where eternal hopes are realized.
9
9
“78% of 18 year-olds in 2022 heard at least one critical race or gender concept from an adult in school, with this being taught as the only respectable view in seven of 10 cases.”
The disturbing fact is that the majority are only being presented one view point. But there is hope from Pink Floyd…
“We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control. All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall”.