I am hopping slickwilly’s answer to the ethics quiz about “Above the Law” editor and social justice warrior taking offense at a Georgetown Law Center prof’s exam question over several other languishing but equally deserving Comment of the Day. The main reason is that it’s witty and mordantly funny, and it made me laugh out loud.
Yes, it qualifies as a rant, and I know there’s a line of long-standing in the Comment policies that says “political rants are not welcome.” However, as readers here know, every rule has exceptions, and several apply to slickwilly’s work. To begin with, any literary form, if executed well, is worthy of respect. Second, Ethics Alarms bestows special privileges on regular commenters here, who add so much to the content and quality of the blog. Finally, I have to concede that sometimes only a rant will do.
The astounding hypocrisy, dishonesty and Orwellian tactics of the “resistance” appear to be immune from rational, traditional analysis. When, for example, Mr Trump’s enraged and hateful foes accuse him of being a fascist while they encourage their supporters to physically intimidate anyone who supports the President, or say that Trump endangers democracy as they attempt to undermine public trust in the President and the nation’s institutions, dispassionate arguments fail to have much impact—it is, as I have said at various times, like arguing with lunatics or toddlers. Rants can provide special clarity by crystallizing the frustration and anger created by trying to engage ethically with a shamelessly unethical adversary. I don’t want rants to become the currency of the realm here, but this one is timely and skillful.
Here is slickwilly’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Insensitive Exam Question”:
“Was the professor’s exam question unethical, as in irresponsible and uncaring?”
Hell, no!
Color me surprised that a progressive hack found something to be offended by.
What, President Trump not taken to Twitter lately? Was this a slow news day in Mystal’s neck of the woods? Weren’t there pygmies in Africa with acne to write about? No pictures of swimming polar bears denoting some perceived deficiency with their habitat, undoubtedly caused by evil man?
‘Snowflake’ is an apt term for what academia and progressives are indoctrinating students into becoming.
If you cannot stand up to the adversity of life, cannot even hear a point of view not dictated by your progressive masters;
If you cannot stand to be reminded that the thing you are outraged about TODAY was the thing you endorsed YESTERDAY;
If the mere presence of a designated ‘deplorable’ on campus sends you fleeing to a room with coloring books and puppies;
If the term ‘safe’ implies a space and not a condition of a runner in Baseball;
If you believe in violence against those who disagree with progressive cant, yet self defense by those attacked is not a natural and correct response;
If you believe that everyone should pay ‘their fair share’ yet complain when YOU have to pony up;
If you believe that Roe-v-Wade is written in stone, yet Heller-v-District of Columbia should be reversed upon a whim;
If you presume to speak upon the behalf of minorities, even when they ask you not to, because of an misguided ‘woke’ guilt that amounts to ‘white man’s burden;’
If you believe that society should be destroyed so that those ‘on the right side of history’ can rebuilt a utopia where they make all the decisions for the ignorant deplorables (ie ‘Americans’);
If you think you would be one of those making the decisions after societal collapse;
If you think all money belongs to the Government, and whatever you think people should be allowed to keep of their hard earned livelihood ought to be the tax code;
If you believe that a tax incentive should instead be spent on ANY program instead (note: tax incentive=revenue that does not exist and will never exist);
If you think that people in fly over country driving pickup trucks are having ANY impact on global climate, much less global warming;
If you believe that America is the only country on earth that enforces their borders, and therefore should not;
If you think ‘climate change’ is anything other than a normal, natural process for a planet;
If you are ‘triggered’ by mere words, and sometimes take them out of context to become so;
If you are perpetually upset about whatever your progressive masters say you should care about, or get angry over trivial matters someone somewhere may have said or done more than twice a week;
If any sort of adversity is some sort of conspiracy against you due to your special designated personal genetics or social status;
If it is somehow unfair when tactics you approve of, or use on others, are used against you;
If you believe that those who disagree with you are some form of -ist or -aphobe simply because they disagree with you, not because of the content of their assertions;
If you think you are literally fighting Nazis;
If you are a part of ‘antifa’ while acting like a fascist;
…
Then the term ‘snowflake’ might apply to you.
A snowflake is unique, yet melts at the smallest temperature change. Likewise, someone who cannot understand the Golden Rule, let alone apply it in their behavior, and cannot persevere under the slightest of headwinds, could fairly be called a snowflake. Like the old saying goes, if the shoe fits, wear it.
Life is tough, and anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something.
Fortunately, there is a cure for this condition. It involves personal responsibility and possible sacrifice, integrity, a personal, ethical code of conduct, and the ability to delay gratification in the attainment of a larger goal. Believing in something and learning to defend your opinion (as well as changing it when evidence suggests you need to) contribute to the cure. Contribute to society instead of continually criticizing those who contribute.
In short, this is not a 23 year old college drop out ‘adulting’ in his mother’s basement, but having the courage to stand on your own feet, and become an adult in the manner of societies the world over for thousands of years.
Gee, that cure sounds a lot like traditional and conservative principles. Must be a mistake.
Ethics Alarms 
“A snowflake may be weak and small, but together form a mighty avalanche”
[ie, a wall of mindless destruction]
ie, an indiscriminate wall of death an destruction, consuming friend and foe alike
Fabulous comment of the day!
Congratulations!
Thanks. Frustration can sometimes be inspiration, Z.
Ooooh, I do fear that this rant will hurt someone’s feelings…running to prepare the fluffy pillows and teddy bears.
Excellent, absolutely Jeff Fox”worthy”.
I love the Jeff Foxworthy rhythm and overtones. sw.
“If you mow your lawn and find a car… you just may be a red neck. If you have a couch on your front porch ….”
I resembled some of Jeff Foxworthy’s jokes, back in his day…
25 years ago I got in an argument in my office with a woman who said it was bigoted and inappropriate to refer to someone who referred to himself as a redneck as a redneck. An early warning of how immune to common sense and language political correctness zealots would come to be.
That’s an iffy proposition, Jack.
It is my understanding that Polish people refer to each other as Polacks.
(There’s a joke in there, but I will just leave it alone.)
-Jut
See the barbershop scene in “Gran Torino.”
Is it bigoted and inappropriate to refer to someone who referred to himself as a redneck as a redneck?
Just replace the word ‘redneck’ with the word ‘nigger’ and try again.
Follow-up question.
Does it make a difference for you if that person is
a. the one you are talking to in a one-on-one conversation?
b. the one you are talking to while others are also involved in that conversation?
c. standing with you and the person you are talking to?
d. not involved in the conversation but in the same space as in, you could point him out to the person you are talking to?
e. not involved in the conversation and not even in the same space.
Follow-up question 2:
Does it make a difference for you when you answer Follow-up question 1 with ‘redneck’ vs ‘nigger’?
Zanshin, for my money, “nigger” is too freighted to be used by anyone of any color in any situation. That’s why I don’t like to hear rappers and other young black hipsters using the term. I think “redneck” is different. There’s some pride in the term. You get a red neck from being a farmer. Nothing wrong with being a farmer. I’d say “Cracker” is more equal to “nigger.” Cracker is only used by black hipsters to describe white southerners, as in “Cracker ass motherfucker,” etc. I can’t imagine white people sitting around making “cracker” jokes or calling each other crackers. Substituting “cracker” for “red neck” is the example you want to use to make your point. Just an observation from someone who grew up in the South among southerners.
Reminds me of “Boomtown” in which Clark Gable always calls Spencer Tracy “Shorty.” Someone else calls him “Shorty,” and Tracy belts him in the mouth. He protests that Gable called him the same thing, and Tracy says, “He can call me that. You can’t.”
Nope. I won’t play those games. If someone uses a name to describe himself, then he’s consented to that description. I wouldn’t call anyone a nigger, no matter what he said, but I would also declare someone using that term as a self description as being ethically estopped from complaining when it was thrown back at him. If someone says, “I’m proud to be a redneck” (which was the context of the discussion I referenced), then you can’t be insulted when I call you what you say you’re proud to be.
This also reminds me of the gag in 1776, when John Dickinson insults John Adams by calling him a “lawyer.”
“…calling him a “lawyer.”
Where I grew up, those would be considered ‘fighting words’ too 🙂
It actually struck me as more Kipling inspired, in form if not in content.
I had the same thought. In fact, I’m considering doing an “If” parody adapting slicks masterpiece. Trying to decide between “you’ll be a snowflake, my son” and “you’ll be an asshole, my son.”
Decisions, decisions….
And I think that’s what threw me about SW’s COTD – I kept expecting that catharsis that Kipling brought after his list of “if” statements, and when it came, it really was more Jeff Foxworthy than it was poetry. I’m not complaining, mind you, just glad I could put my finger on why it felt off to me.
Who is this ‘Kipling’ you are going on about?
Oh, the author of ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘Just So Stories.’ Gotcha.
No, I have not read enough of him to emulate his style, I guess. Just the two stories above. So I think Foxworthy was the influence, but I was not consciously trying to emulate his style.
I DID consider ending with ‘Here’s you sign…’ but decided against it. The Blue Collar Tour was golden as it resonated true to life in rural Texas.
Anyone who doesn’t understand and appreciate the self-deprecation in Jeff Foxworthy’s humor is missing a fundamental and important aspect of the American character, at least its non-cosmopolitan contingent. Entire swaths of the U.S. population don’t take themselves too seriously. There’s a great deal of joy to be had in laughing at one’s self.
Very well put! I certainly appreciate Foxworthy’s humor, as well as the way SW channeled him, but my mind just went a different direction.
Thank you, Jack, for the indulgence.
That story yesterday was the straw that broke the ethicist’s back: I had to respond, or have my head detach from my neck, crawl down my back, and start chewing on my own butt. Once I started writing, it sort of took a life of its own.
I learn things here at EA, sometimes ones I wish I had not and need mental bleach for (hat tip to Steve from NJ… 🙂 ) but many are of use in growing myself as a human being. Ethics, of course, but more than that: the chance to sharpen my rhetorical perspective and technique (Zoltar, OB, HT and others), to ‘cross swords’ and test my resolve to fight ethically (Hi Alizia!), to lose a debate (Sparty, Penn, and Zoe come to mind, Charles too, before he fled in shame) and therefore learn, to be exposed to concepts and ideas my formal education and life experience lack, and to share a seat in the peanut gallery with more-or-less like minded folk watching the circus our national politics and society have become.*
Today I looked up and learned a new word, which I understood from context, but poorly:
Mordant: having or showing a sharp or critical quality; biting.
I like the synonyms too: caustic, trenchant, biting, cutting, acerbic, sardonic, sarcastic, scathing, acid, sharp, keen, tart, pungent, stinging, astringent, incisive, devastating, piercing, rapierlike, razor-edged…
Tart, pungent, stinging, astringent… when the carrot no longer works, the stick is needed to get the student’s attention. I hope my little tirade made readers laugh, and therefore vent a little of the frustration we all share at what passes for public discourse these days.
The winds are changing. We are going to take back our nation, and once again be the shining city on a hill. We will change the imperialism that has infects our politics for the past century plus. Progressives can hide and watch: your day is ending.
*Whew! That was a long sentence! Maybe I can rewrite it… nope, I like it just as it is.
SW:
Well done. I like the Foxworthy and Kipling references. Nice work.
“Life is tough, and anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something.” One of my favorite ‘”Princess Bride” lines. I used it on The Boy the other day.
jvb
The Princess Bride quote is slightly off, and the line before it also has something to say:
Buttercup: “You mock my pain!”
The Man in Black: “Life is Pain, Princess: Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
I regularly encounter fragile flowers who whine about the distress they suffer when forced to encounter ideas that challenge their own. They then whine further when mocked for their fragility, invariably reminding me of that line.
The line did not come from Princess Bride (one of my favorite movies). I adapted it from Robert Heinlein (” There is no such thing as a free lunch!”) who likely adapted it from Michael Montague, who said:
“There is no such thing as free lunch,” he said. “First of all, you have to buy something from the saloonkeeper before you can partake of the lunch. Lunch is the greatest tempering influence in the saloon. If a man takes a two-ounce drink of whisky and then takes a bite of lunch, he probably does not take a second drink. Whisky taken alone creates an appetite.”
Google is such a wonderful tool with which to feed the Elephant’s Child*
*Take that, Kipling fans!
Great rejoinder.
jvb
Nice work, sw. Impressive intensity maintained for a long time.Pretty darned virtuosic. And thank you for the mention.
An apropos article I found regarding generation snowflake: https://www.forbes.com/sites/prospernow/2012/05/10/a-generation-of-sissies/
Jack,
The article Wayne points out is COTD quality, and addresses the thread in this posting in a very trenchant* way.
Worth the 5 minutes it take to read.
(*I got to use one of my new words, too.)
Well done, slick. Wish I could write like that.
His Slickness writes: “The winds are changing. We are going to take back our nation, and once again be the shining city on a hill. We will change the imperialism that has infects our politics for the past century plus. Progressives can hide and watch: your day is ending.”
Winds may be blowing, but it is not possible to say that change is on the horizon. I say this only to be fair and truthful. What change?
Take back our nation? From who? No one on this blog, to date, seems to have much of a sense of even what ‘nation’ means. Whose ‘nation’? The point of seeing the present is to distinguish the degree to which the possibility of defining a ‘nation’ has become difficult, if not impossible. What do you mean by ‘nation’?
To be a ‘shining nation on a hill’? Are you making this statement in seriousness? What does a ‘shining nation’ do? There are ten different definitions required here!
According to some analysts, America is better defined today as an Imperialism. What controls an imperialism is not ‘people’ but factions. America has an empire even though it is (they say) shrinking. To be an ’empire’ is very different than being a ‘republic’. We cannot be both! Therefore, what does ‘shine’ mean? To be a moral example?
Some thoughts of Julius Evola:
Note: He is speaking of a right-radicalism. And though he is speaking of the former Soviet Union and its Communism, his view is still relevant to the present. What America has become needs to be seen, agreed upon. Here, people cling to romantic notions, and do not see ‘reality’.
There in no one who writes on this Blog who is even seeing ‘America’ and the Americanopolis, I regret to say (and please excuse the bold statement), therefore, what, Slick One, are you talking about?!?
I knew I could get you out to count the number of Angels arses which could sit on the head of a pin, Alizia. Hide and watch the change, my good woman. You will be astounded.
Happy Memorial Day, in which we celebrate your freedom to comment by revering Americans who died to protect you.
It’s easier to remain in narcotic dreams than to face what it will really take to confront the excesses of the present. But I admire your steadfastness!
The freedoms I enjoy are republican and constitutional freedoms. They were profoundly endangered by neo-Conservative adventurism of recent years.
A connection a non-narcotized mind should make. But you don’t. Why?
Sticks and stone, my foreign opponent. By now you should have given up on me as unable to understand your fine theories about the problems in my country!
“The freedoms I enjoy are republican and constitutional freedoms.”
Those were paid for with American blood and treasure: you think Britain or the USSR could have defeated fascism without the arsenal of freedom? You would be speaking German today, or never have been born (given the propensity of Germany and Japan to perpetuate genocide upon anyone not themselves.) I agree that adventurism is bad, and said so above.
In truth, you occasionally make good points. The prescription you offer is simply not possible in the society you would medicate, alas! We will muddle along as best we can: after all, America has the best track record of any on earth, despite all of our flaws.
Then I am very glad that some of my occasional points do make sense to you. One problem in this blog-format is that extended conversations are difficult, even impossible. That is unfortunate. I could make some of the points that are opaque more clear.
And you misunderstand: I am not calling names, not as you seem to think. I am saying that perception is narcotized and that we collectively need to rise out of it. I would hope that at the least you might have considered what Julius Evola wrote because he is pointing out that it is not the Communists or the American-style capitalists that are ‘our friends’. Just as I say that the neo-Conservative American (faction, or grouping) is not the friend of the America that you admire and that I admire too. You take my critique in the wrong way, or you take it to be something it is not. I am trying to formulate a a critical position grounded in principles.
But there is more: this is what the New Right is doing. It challenges and questions a dominant Liberalism. Even if you did not agree that this is good or needed, still it is important to know what is going on around you (us).
You may not like what I say, but I wish that you would try to understand it better. It is only fair. Months ago, Jack used the ‘angels dancing on the head of pins’ thing: this is unfair and it is also silly. Why resort to it? If your interest, or his or anyone’s interest, is only to better understand what people who come at politics from different angles are thinking.
So, when Evola says:
“The distinctive trait of Americanism is that the attack on quality and personality is not accomplished by means of the brutal coercion of a Marxist dictatorship and the care of the state, but takes place almost spontaneously, by means of a civilization that does not recognize ideals higher than wealth, consumption, profit, and unchecked economic growth—an exaggeration and reductio ad absurdum of what Europe herself has chosen.”
This could easily be a Christian critique.
Are you not able to see how what is referred to is playing out right in front of us? Why must you necessarily interpret a critique, which is creative, as a negative? Why? What do you defend? Can you not understand that what he referring to is a ‘higher value’?
You mentioned a ‘city on a hill’. That is a Biblical reference. If it does not mean something high and moral, what in truth are you talking about? How will America show itself a City on a Hill?
Are you unable to see that people that are gravitating toward a New Right, a critical Right, and who are taking positions against Liberalism in its decadent phase, are trying to establish proper values? Those that you seem to hold in esteem?
What *prescription* is that? I don’t think you could define what I say, or what Evola says (which in significant part I agree with insofar as he was writing to Right-leaning youth trying to define a solid position for themselves, spiritually, existentially and also politically). You close your mind. But why?
The statement that you make about America’s track record is a fallacy of the sort that Jack lists. You use it as an excuse so as not to have to do proper analysis. Your use of it is unethical. If you can admit to ‘flaws’ then why not be honest and open about them? Why set up the comparison?
It is an improper and unfair way to deal with critical ideas. And that is what I am trying to work with: critical ideas.
You said:
The winds are changing. We are going to take back our nation, and once again be the shining city on a hill. We will change the imperialism that has infect[ed] our politics for the past century plus. Progressives can hide and watch: your day is ending.
Wait! It has been those ‘progressives’ with the more coherent discourse in opposition to American imperialism! It used to be — when the Left was the Left and not a sexual perversion club — that they would speak about these things. And you are taking a critical position against American imperialism? You are not making any sense.
The ‘winds’ are not going to change until there is a clear understanding of what precisely needs changing. I do not think that you (I mean this in a plural sense) have much understanding of what is facing you (us).
I wonder if this is some part of your City on a Hill? (Paul Gottfried)
No and yes, in that order, because …
… no, nor could the U.S.A. have done it either in any other arrangement of all three, because the truth of the matter was, as Stalin recognised, that Britain provided time, the U.S.S.R. provided blood, and the U.S.A. provided treasure. If any of those had been missing, even if any of the contributors had provided a different contribution instead, it would have failed. Actually, all three did contribute some of each, sometimes a lot in relation to their capacity, but only in those three respects did it make a difference. So U.S. blood, although paid*, didn’t buy what Soviet blood did**.
* Churchill’s “History of the Second World War” notes in passing that, right up until D-Day, there were more British and Commonwealth forces in action than U.S. ones. That incidentally implies that the tide would have turned without a U.S. blood payment at all, since it actually already had turned on the Eastern Front, though we only know that with hindsight and it did make a lot of difference to where the Iron Curtain fell and to the Pacific theatre.
** I have myself listened to the reminiscences of a veteran of the Soviet advance on Berlin who served in a motorised unit all the way from Moscow, one David Lasky, latterly a resident of an old people’s home near where I live in Melbourne. He recalled how the Germans were always better fed, clothed and equipped right up until the end, which does go to show that the Soviets’ main contribution lay in other areas. As Stalin also remarked, quantity has a quality all its own.
So your contention is that had the USA simply financed the whole shebang and stayed in the Pacific theater that Britain and the USSR would have defeated the Germans alone?
Okay, I guess. You are not mentioning that the military leadership of both countries were not covering themselves in glory, or that American leadership made any difference whatsoever… and are implying that American blood was shed in vain.
But getting past all of that, we have yet another quibble from you, PM, that misses the point of my post: without the treasure (forgetting the blood) the allies were doomed.
My statement was “Those were paid for with American blood and treasure: you think Britain or the USSR could have defeated fascism without the arsenal of freedom?”
Both of those assertions, blood and treasure, are objectively true. Note I deliberately mentioned ‘fascism’ as well: Your focus on the European TO neglects the world situation of the time.
American blood was what kept the Japanese Empire from attacking the USSR. Japan could not antagonize the Soviets in the north and west while fighting to the south and east. It relieved the pressure on Britain’s armies and fleet, stopping Japan’s advance early in the war; it saved Australia from likely invasion and subjugation. Treasure alone could not have done this.
These are facts.
Now we move to probabilities and guesses at alternative history:
After defeating Hitler’s Reich, do you think either of those war weary countries could have taken on a victorious, intact Japan as well?
Had the US withdrawn from Hawaii and only protected our west coast, what would have been the consequences as Japan gained the very resources they went to war for in the first place?
Do you believe they would have stopped at India and Australia?
Would genocide never have come to Africa, or the Middle East?
Japan could have been fine with China, the Pacific rim, India, Australia, and possibly large chunks of Alaska and the USSR, and thus stopped their aggression. We will never know, because it did not happen.
“So U.S. blood, although paid, didn’t buy what Soviet blood did”
So what? What I said in the first place qualifies all by itself, and your pedantic nitpick is an Alinsky tactic* most often used by progressives to discredit when they cannot win on facts. Why did you pick this battle? My statement was not controversial.
*pick a small item tangentially related to the point being made, claim or prove it wrong to any degree, and the assert it invalidates the entire argument
I’m sorry for the delay replying. I’m both busy myself and held up by browser trouble.
No, rather that the U.S.S.R. would have defeated the Germans alone – once Britain had prepared the way by hanging in there. That was likely even when the Germans attacked U.S.S.R., since that had been delayed by such things as the defence of Crete, and just about certain after Stalingrad. Of course, that would have led to a very different Europe, but that’s a different question.
Actually, those leaderships were doing very well after their apprenticeships, which took about a year and a half – and it took the U.S. leadership about the same time too, which was why it made several unforced errors in 1943 and 1944, luckily not crucial ones, as it turned out (e.g. Eisenhower thought that capturing Antwerp would secure a forward port, but overlooked that it needed the mouths of the Scheldt too).
No, I wasn’t. I outright acknowledged that it made a huge difference to the post-war world, implying no more than there would have been a German defeat – but that would have meant a Soviet bloc possibly as far as the English Channel, the Pyrenees and Scandinavia.
Please do not set up a straw man. Not only is that point 100% correct, I myself made that very point. I quoted Stalin observing it.
That happens not to be the case, if I may quote Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven in “The Mote In God’s Eye”. Only the latter is true, and I showed how.
And there I was reading that very use of “fascism” to mean you were emphasising it yourself (after all, Japan wasn’t very fascist, just Axis, and Nationalist China was slightly more fascist itself anyway). But even a holding action in the East would have led to a Soviet led victory there a few years later.
Er, no. What stopped them doing that, indeed what turned them south in the first place, was a combination of the bloody nose they had got when they tried in the late 1930s, and their urgent need for strategic resources such as oil that they couldn’t obtain from the Soviet Far East.
They are indeed facts, but they are irrelevant digressions to the point at issue, perhaps even quibbles: they had no bearing on whether fascism was defeated. Do you suppose that that would have lasted, once the war in the west was won? Someone in the west would have reaped the gains in the east, too, once Japan could no longer fight (think Royal Navy by sea, Red Army by land, and any later U.S. involvement on top of that).
What “victorious, intact Japan”? Isn’t that just what happened in mainland China anyway? The war weary Red Army took out Japanese land forces that had been worn out by Pyrrhic Victories and Fabian Tactics. (And, before you quibble, I fully acknowledge the role U.S. support played in that; it comes under the heading of “treasure”.)
Well, yes, they would indeed have stopped – then, for that round, as they would have reached the limits of what they could do. Think how they actually took several bites at China, rather than trying to get it in one go. What else might have followed is even more counter-factual.
It’s not a “pedantic nitpick”, it’s the actual, verifiable historical record. And I know your statement was not controversial, among people who have internalised that false account, it is merely wrong in a way that matters because it leads people astray in ways they follow today – and that is why it is no mere pedantry.