Democrats and identity politics dishonesty

January 14, 2016 Leave a comment

Fox News is a venue more fit for exchanging sound bites than exchanging measured arguments. Yet, there is value even in analyzing sound bites, because those still should be backed by honesty and integrity. Over two consecutive nights on Megyn Kelly’s “The Kelly File,” Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and then Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman dutifully dropped their D-bombs, “diversity” and “discrimination,” to drive home a tired narrative that Republicans are mired in a racist, misogynistic, and homophobic past. Whatever else those bombs were loaded with, it wasn’t honesty or integrity.

Democrat Zimmerman twice asserted that Republicans were stuck in the 1950s. But Democrats seem to be mired in the 1960s, for that was when equal pay for women was enacted by legislation under John F. Kennedy. He’s been dead for more than 50 years, but Democrats keep exploiting the senseless women’s pay equality meme. To keep doing so, without substantiating evidence, is politically dishonest. And that dishonesty goes all the way up the chain to President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Zimmerman also alleges Republicans of wanting to discriminate against LGBT Americans, but this is just an empty smear. When social conservatives are amply justified to support policies based on natural law and common sense, the charge that they want to legislate Jim Crow animus against sexual minorities does not stick.

Do Republicans really have a problem with minorities generally? They do have a disproportionate lack of support among minority voters, but arguably that is more due to the stereotypes those voters hold of Republicans than the substance of Republican policies. Indeed, when it comes to Republican officeholders, the problem vanishes. For example, Susana Martinez and Nikki Haley are both nonwhite, female, twice-elected Republican governors. Democrats really need a new playbook.

And contrary to what Wasserman Schultz said to Megyn Kelly, Haley has had a very sunny approval rating in South Carolina, making her “one of the most popular Governors [sic] in the country.”

Debbie Wasserman Schultz is emblematic of what’s wrong with politics today. She is a con woman whose rhetoric is totally disconnected from reality. Zimmerman and Democrats right up through the President have this same disconnect. To be sure, they don’t monopolize this problem to the exclusion of Republicans. Inasmuch they blame immigrants for the econimic hardships of America’s working class, they partake in the disconnect too. But Democrats seem to be the masters of spewing identity politics nonsense.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4703064148001/did-dnc-chair-make-sexist-remarks-about-gov-nikki-haley/?playlist_id=928378949001

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Top 10 uncogitated posts of 2013, part I

December 23, 2013 5 Comments

Photo credit: Puzzler4879 / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Hi cogitators!  Somehow it came upon me, now that we’re at the end of the year, to post a list of of the top 10 posts that did not make the cutting floor in 2013.  Since I have written a bit on each item, I will split the list into two posts, counting down to the most remarkable posts of the year.  I will supply the top five on the flip side of Christmas.  Without further ado.

10. Sam Harris’ s Free Will.  A Facebook conversation about the implications of a Libet-type neurological study prompted me to Sam Harris’ brief 2012 monograph Free Will.  He attempts to bury the concept by inviting us to imagine a hypothetically completed science.  That is, we are meant to indulge a  science of the gaps.

As for the root of cognition, Mr. Harris thinks free will libertarians are hopelessly lost in the blizzard that is the unending chain of causality.  He doesn’t consider that he is equally adrift as a determinist.  Neither does he engage much philosophy beyond Daniel Dennett.   Hardly a comprehensive take on the question.

I think Harris tries to be clever in his final pages with a “meta” discourse about what he is thinking and writing on the page as he is writing it.  But the worst offense is his reverse psychological claim that people who earn their income and wealth are not actually responsible for the acquisition, and are therefore not entitled to it.

I’ve mentioned Ayn Rand’s statist scientist character, Floyd Ferris before.  Dr. Ferris authors a book titled, Why do you think you think?  It’s fitting that his name rhymes with Harris.  If you want to see the utter inadequacy of this popular pseudo-yourself, the book is short enough to dispatch in a couple of hours.

9.  Steven Pinker’s scientism apologia.  Social scientist Steven Pinker sparked quite a conversation in August with his New Republic article extolling the virtues of scientism.  I think it caused some added hand wringing among the humanities community, even though it was purported to dispel such concerns.  Good thing scientism is a self-refuting theory of knowledge; that is, the scientific method is principally incapable of inducting itself into its own body of knowledge.

8.  Paul Ryan, Scott Walker ascend in GOP 2016 field.  After Paul Ryan and Patty Murray coauthored a politically viable if universally reviled compromise federal budget, Mr. Ryan’s 2016 presidential prospects shot up.  As I often learn first from Michael Medved, an Iowa poll put him far atop the GOP field.  Of course the usual disclaimer follows, that the next presidential election is very far away, and much can change by then.  Further, Ryan has signaled no clear intention to run.

Ryan’s boost, and recent attention on Scott Walker are welcome at a time when many commentators are still spewing a lot of hot air about how “mainstream” or “establishment” Republicans are not true conservatives, whatever that means.  Last I checked, winning elections so as to govern the country was still a part of the conservative platform.

7.  Presidential approval, Democrats’ 2014 chances tank. Nothing has been as remarkable in politics this year as the stark turn around in public opinion that occurred in October.  One day, there was that silly poll about how Congressional Republicans were as popular as toe fungus.  Then, the President and Congressional Democrats tanked on the Obamacare roll-out, and more significantly, the “if you like it, you can keep it” prevarication.  Clearly, government shut downs are not popular.  And neither is that disaster extraordinaire, Obamacare.

6. Millennials care less for culture war; culture war still cares for them.  Progressive evangelical blogger Rachel Held Evans used her highly visible CNN Belief Blog to disown the culture wars on behalf of millennials.  If the writing at Relevant magazine bears any truth, the rhetorical volleys between millennials and their elders have been exchanged for quite some time.  I know that in the public sphere, the back and forth gets old, especially when each camp is just indulging its own echo chamber.

Hat tip to Dr. Craig for bringing his own frank critique of Evan’s piece to bear in his current events podcast.  I don’t think the culture warrior label is to be shunned.  Indeed, there’s a real war going on.  As Medved notes, it’s not cultural conservatives who are the instigators, but cultural progressives, who are continually extending newly invented rights, even into grade school bathrooms for crying out loud.

That rounds out the second tier of 2013’s counterfactual cogitations.  Now enjoy the holiday, with thanks and reverence for the God who subjected himself as an infant to humanity’s mercies so that in time he could extend to us the gift of his mercy.  Merry Christmas!

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Arizona Dems’ unreasoned defense of gun buybacks

April 17, 2013 Leave a comment

(Wikimedia)

I have to say, the Boston bombing earlier this week makes these days sad and sobering.  Breaching insanity-as-usual, there is for a time, something approaching a public consensus on the reality of evil.

Of course, it is one thing to admit evil exists; it’s another thing to take action that combats it.  Gun buybacks definitely aren’t one of those things.  Today an AP headline tells of an amusing way to deal with them: “Ariz. bill passed makes cities sell turned-in guns.”

The law in Arizona already requires that cities sell confiscated weapons.  All the new bill does is extend this to buyback guns as well.  This move exposes the absurdity of the buyback project.  The number of guns removed by buybacks are hopelessly miniscule compared to the stock in circulation.  And, only upright, conscientious citizens think of turning their guns over to law enforcement.  This increases the ratio of bad guys with guns to good guys with guns.  So buybacks are a losing proposition on two counts.  Inasmuch as cities decide to conduct these exercises in futility, why shouldn’t the state mandate that they recoup some of the cost?

Okay, so this is a slap in the face of liberal feel-good activism.  But the rejoinder by Democrats is unworthy of being called reasonable or logical:

Democrats argued that Republicans complain about the federal government when it requires the state to take action, yet they’re quick to force local governments to do what they want. “We hate it when the federal government mandates it to the state, and we’re doing the same thing,” said Sen. Lynne Pancrazi, D-Yuma. They also complained about victims having to deal with the knowledge that a gun that killed a loved one could end up back on the streets.

This appears to be some sort of appeal to a double-standard.  But there’s a huge distinction between unwanted federal meddling and the state prescribing laws for the cities that are organized directly under its authority.  That distinction is the simple difference between the constitutions of the U.S. and Arizona respectively.  The Democratic senator is actually complaining about the compulsory nature of laws themselves rather than any hypocrisy Republicans might harbor.  But this is highly inconsistent coming from a party that thrives in direct proportion to the increase of government regulations, budgets, and lawsuits.

The complaint about guns ending up back on the streets is a non sequitur.  That happens already, in spite of the new bill being passed.  In fact, any gun that killed a person is more likely to have been seized than bought back.  How often does a person commit murder with a gun and then sell the weapon to law enforcement?  And if that were to happen, what is the likelihood the victim’s family would actually know or care about the ultimate fate of the gun?  Arizona Democrats sure are testing the limits of the emotional appeal.  Break out the tiny violins.

But what is most remarkable of all is that the AP reporter quotes these Democrats matter of fact, as if their statements actually made sense.

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