More Equity

 

                                  More Equity

Inequity in life has become a condition where choice does not matter. This woman is really mad.

"The ever-moving goalposts of leftist ideology have shifted once again, this time regarding equality. American exceptionalism derives from the concept of equality of opportunity. Such equality has diluted in meaning as the rise of woke ideology has taken over the culture and our major institutions. Calls for equality have turned into demands for equity — a goal that requires extraordinary lengths of unequal treatment and yet will never be achieved.

The replacement of the word “equality” for “equity” was a subtle yet deliberate move by politicians, activists, the mainstream media, and the rest of the ruling class in the hopes that people would think the terms hold the same meaning. Equality and equity are not synonymous. In fact, they are in direct conflict. Equity requires uniform outcome and uniform outcome requires unequal standards — certain rules apply to some but not to others.

Our obsession with equity has created a caste system that actively segregates, discriminates, and judges based on sex, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. Your individual characteristics, of which you have no control over, are now either your greatest asset or biggest downfall. In order to justify the logic of discriminating based on superficial characteristics, you must buy into the notion that our entire country is entrenched in a system of oppression towards minorities in each of these categories. If this were true, then no amount of equity councils or policy changes could rectify the unjust system. The system cannot cure itself if the very system is the problem — the system itself must be destroyed.

Yet, you don’t see executives giving up their positions to people of color. You don’t see woke students refusing their admission to college so a disadvantaged person may take their spot. You didn’t see Joe Biden not run for president to give a minority a better chance to grab the presidential nomination. You don’t see the system giving up its power; you see the system taking every opportunity to expand it.

An equitable future is not the goal. A controlled one is. When you live in a country where equal opportunity, not equal outcome, is the basis of policy and law, then any disparity — racial or otherwise — can be largely attributed not to systemic discrimination, but to individual choice and decision-making. Herein lies the problem: to admit that individual choices are the driving factors of outcome is to admit personal responsibility in failure and success. In a culture that rewards victimhood, there is no societal power to be yielded in taking personal responsibility. We’ve cultivated a society that views personal responsibility with antipathy, labeling it a product of white supremacy." --Alyssa Ahlgren

Health Care

 

                              Health Care

The Americans talk wistfully of their independence from government but the numbers, and the subtle influences, do not necessarily support that. For example, Health Care:

Medicare and Medicaid cover nearly 1 out of every 3 Americans – that’s more than 100 million Americans.

Medicare Enrollment – 19 million in 1966; 45 million in 2014; 61 million in 2019.

Medicaid provided coverage to over 75 million people in 2019. This includes working men and women, pregnant women, children, people with disabilities, and older adults.

Medicare was used to desegregate hospitals after the Civil Rights Act went into effect. If hospitals wanted to receive federal funding, they had to comply with the Civil Rights Act and desegregate.

10,000 Americans will be eligible for Medicare every day over the next 20 years.

81 million Americans will be enrolled in Medicare by 2030.

White Supremacy

 

                                                            

                         White Supremacy

On Wednesday, responding to the murders in Atlanta of eight people, six of whom were Asian, a writer for The Root who also is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times asserted that “whiteness is a public health crisis.”

Damon Young wrote, “It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people—white people and people who are not white, my mom included. There will be people who die, in 2050, because of white supremacy-induced decisions from 1850.”

He concluded, “White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect. Which means the only way to stop it is to locate it, isolate it, extract it, and kill it. I guess a vaccine could work, too. But we’ve had 400 years to develop one, so I won’t hold my breath.”

Last October, Young penned an article in Esquire in which he blamed white society for the death of his mother, who died of lung cancer. He wrote:

"When she was a terminal cancer patient, that status was her primary identity when receiving care, superseding race, gender, and class. She was considered vulnerable. Defenseless. Worthy. Of protection. Of pain relief. Of treatment. Of effort. But when she was just another Black woman, she was just another Black woman and treated as such. Of course, I have no hard proof of this."

Young quoted a report from Pittsburgh’s Gender Equity Commission saying the city was “arguably the most unlivable” city in the country for black women. He wrote, “There are few better places on earth to be sick than in Pittsburgh. And few worse places in the country to be sick if you’re a Black woman.”

Young said that the reason Pittsburgh is “so livable for white people and so unlivable for Black men and Black teens and Black children and Black babies and, specifically, Black women” was that Pittsburgh “used eminent domain to displace hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents from the predominantly Black Lower Hill District” in the mid-1950s and that “Pittsburgh is a city in the same America that owes its vastness, power, and wealth to its plundering of Native people and its centuries of free labor from enslaved Africans.”

Young asserted, “I know why Vivienne Leigh Young died. She existed in the least livable body in America’s most livable city.”

The culture has become incredibly unreflective and stupid. Of course, I have no hard proof of this.

Palm Sunday

 

                                           Palm Sunday

This is Palm Sunday, usually a vibrant day among Christians but now muted by the Virus but also a general decline in the faith of the world. The gospel is a sort of shortened story of the Passion which comes in more gruesome detail during the coming week.

The Gospel is oblique as Christ is passive throughout; the real actors are the humans. Humans fail on just about every level you can imagine. Christ's friends leave Him, the future head of the Church denies Him, the religious organization that He is a member of conspires against Him and the State washes its hands of Him. 

It's a pretty ugly picture. There are some obvious explanations. Christ is the only answer. Friends are fickle and the world transient. Organizations can not be relied upon. They may all be true. But there seems to be very little faith in human beings or their constructs. Even the tried-and-true customs and institutions that we all think of as society's DNA fall apart at this moment.

It is a view of moral and social dystopia. Chaos of the spirit. The storm that comes later after Golgotha is only an exclamation point.

Stats and Graphs

 

                                                     Stats  and Graphs

Travel as an economic marker:

This graph is surprising, not at all what you would expect historically or from the public discussion.

Michigan's service industry has been hit hard by the government response to the Virus. Would a terrorist threat be worse?

At a Monday White House press conference, Jill Biden’s chief of staff Julissa Reynoso made the claim that “A year into COVID-19, it is clear that women have been disproportionately impacted by the combined public health crisis and ensuing economic crisis….”

They just say stuff.

"Ungrowth," the Upside of Recession and Depression

 

                       "Ungrowth," the Upside of Recession and Depression

The Left has come out of the closet. Greta Thunberg summed up the argument when she chastised delegates at a UN climate summit in 2019: “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” 

With the failure of their anti-incentive policies, their need for murderous control, their ignoring of the success of the unfettered West over the last 200 years, they have finally decided to announce that their economic failures are good for the world.

The hard part will be selling intentional deprivation to the world but they have shut down the world's economy because of a virus to the applause of the victims so maybe they can do it.

Liberty Origins

 

                                                        

                                       Liberty Origins

America first established the idea that absolutism is wrong. Till then it had been inconvenient, injurious, a burden and a drawback to prosperity etc. It was a privilege to be free from it. But liberty was an acquired privilege, not a universal right. Aristotle had allowed absolute power; S. Augustine likewise. In the Middle Ages, the idea that the heterodox are equal, that rights belong to individuals, apart from their land, their faith, their colour, was not known…. Indeed, it would have overthrown every throne in Europe. It arose in America.--Lord Acton

Worshipping in the Church of the Self-inflicted Wound

 

    Worshipping in the Church of the Self-inflicted Wound

The meeting between the U.S. and the Chinese in Alaska was not warm and an interesting theme developed from the Chinese.

After US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, referred to rising global concern over Beijing’s human rights record, China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi said: “We hope that United States will do better on human rights. The fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the US itself,” he said in a 15-minute speech that appeared to irritate Blinken.

He added that US human rights issues were “deep-seated … they did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter”.

So the Chinese refer to a communist anti-American organization--working as a fifth column in the United States with apparent press and government approval--as evidence for dissatisfaction in America. A homicidal dictatorship is lecturing the United States on human rights using their own agent as examples of American opinion.

And it is taught that fiction requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

.

Keystone Kops

 

                             Keystone Kops

The nightmare of the Virus and the government response continues to go intensely ignored. The most recent disaster is in Europe. This from a WSJ article: (from Don)

"Various European regulators and politicians spent this week claiming the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine—the only one currently widely available in the EU—might be unsafe, only to rethink and now beg people to start accepting it.

This time the concern was that the jab caused blood clotting or problems with blood platelets in some patients. Some people who received the vaccine developed blood clots, but the European Medicines Agency (EMA) found the vaccine was not associated with an increase in the overall risk.

Among the 11 million or so vaccinated in the U.K., serious clots were less common than would be expected in the general population. People can develop clots for many reasons including other health conditions and medications. Covid-19 can also cause clots, so any risk-benefit calculation favors vaccination.

This is of a piece with a distinctly European safety-ism that has dogged the vaccine program since the start. Introduction of the AstraZeneca jab was held up even after the EMA approved it because bureaucrats in Germany claimed there was no evidence it works in patients older than 65.

Fewer elderly patients were included in the sample during the vaccine’s trial phase, but that’s as far as the truth to this claim went. It was quickly rebutted—real-world evidence available even then from the U.K. showed high efficacy in the older cohort—but not before French President Emmanuel Macron picked up the theme.

Such careless talk deterred vulnerable elderly Europeans from accepting the vaccine last month. It also skewed priority lists. Younger teachers and university professors in Italy received jabs ahead of the ill and elderly under a scheme developed when officials claimed the shot wouldn’t work for the old."

It goes on. Uncertainity, rumor, grandstanding, indecision, fear of responsibility. Worse than the Virus. But the Virus doesn't pretend to be your friend.

Sunday/Fugitive God

               Sunday/Fugitive God

The Fifth Sunday of Lent, hard to appreciate fully in this time of the Virus. But it is a crucial part of the history of Christ as He seems to waver, then recovers.

Greeks, through Philip--a Greek name--, seek Christ out. Christ weighs His familiar elements, the material and the spiritual, as He predicts His death: 

"unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat;
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
Whoever loves his life loses it,"

Then a riveting reflective moment:

“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?
‘Father, save me from this hour’?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.

A voice--or thunder--is heard from the sky and Christ seems to get His footing:

'“This voice did not come for my sake but for yours.
Now is the time of judgment on this world;
now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
And when I am lifted up from the earth,
I will draw everyone to myself.”
He said this indicating the kind of death he would die.'


"now the ruler of this world will be driven out." Imagine.

           This bread I break

This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this time wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Dylan Thomas

Small Samples

                           

                       Small Samples

Generalizing from small samples is the hallmark of scientific error. And it is the essence of bigotry. This beleaguered nation is beginning to suffer the side-effects of these kinds of mistakes. A medical event in a man getting the vaccine is translated as cause and effect. An illness in one is seen as a potential for all. A savage attack by a policeman is seen as emblematic of police behavior.

This allows politics to group individuals in groups in defiance of the country's preoccupation with the individual.

This is the thinking of folklore, not science, and a modern and thoughtful community should be able to recognize and correct it with little trouble. But it does not. There are only a couple of reasons that could explain this. One is profound ignorance. The other is insincerity.

 

Trump and McCarthy

 

                                                          

                           Trump and McCarthy

"A recent petition, signed by hundreds of Harvard Law School students and alumni, raises the specter of the new McCarthyism coming to the law school at which I taught for half a century. The petition states that "Harvard Law School faces a choice of whether to welcome the architects and backers of the Trump administration's worse abuses back into polite society." It demands that Harvard not "hire or affiliate with" any of these sinners, and threatens that "if it does so the school will be complicit if future attacks on our democracy are even more violent – and more successful."

The petition sees this ban as part of the educational and employment mission of the school: "it would also teach ambitious students of all ages that attempting to subvert the democratic process" will deny them access to the "revolving door to success and prestige." This self-serving defense of censorship is intended to convey a crass economic threat: if you want to get a good job after law school, make sure that Harvard bans teachers and speakers who are trying to "rehabilitate their reputations and obscure the stain of their complicity in the Trump administration ...."

This is similar to the message that the original McCarthyites tried to have Harvard convey in the 1950s, when students were denied editorship of the Law Review, clerkship recommendations, and other opportunities that they had earned, solely because of their alleged affiliation with Communism and other left-wing causes."

This is from a Dershowitz article trying to defend free speech. I'm unsure how well the analogy to McCarthyism holds up, though. Communism was an international problem, and remains so. It has a vision of inherent group conflict that can be resolved only by the deracination of one group, with a worldwide aim of revolution, murder, and enslavement. Trump is hard to summarize other than a blustering philosophy-free zone with some bad nationalist trade ideas. Obnoxious but not scary. What is interesting here is the over-the-top reaction to Trump and his supporters, most of whom are benign, older citizens who want the U.S. reestablished as an economic and political example of success.

Science Apparently has a lot of Leeway

 

                                           Science Apparently has a Lot of Leeway

Lockdown stuff from Britain.

Sir Graham Brady MP asked the Health Secretary to publish the Government’s evidence on transmission risks in the different settings that are affected by lockdown restrictions. The Government’s answer has now been published – and basically admits it currently has no evidence and won’t have any until the summer. By which point all restrictions are envisaged to be gone!

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of September 2nd 2020 to Question 75983, on Coronavirus: Shops, if he will publish (a) the studies and (b) other research reports that his Department holds on the presence of viable COVID-19 virus in the air in (i) supermarkets, (ii) other large retail settings and (iii) other non-clinical settings. (154773)

Tabled on: February 19th 2021

Answer:
Edward Argar: 

The National Institute for Health Research and UK Research and Innovation jointly awarded over £5.3million for a programme of research of eight projects to understand the routes of transmission of COVID-19 in different environments and groups of people. These projects are 12-15 months in duration and are expected to report findings in the summer of 2021.

The answer was submitted on March 2nd 2021.

Danse Macabre Has Rules

                                           Danse Macabre Has Rules

I have never met an advocate of government intervention who did not admit, inadvertently, his own capacity for commissariat functions. He always has a plan, to which others must submit, and his certainty that the plan will produce the contemplated results does not permit him to brook criticism. Always he is the fanatic. If you disagree with him it is not because you are in error; it is because you are sinful.--Chorodov

As the analogies to Salem rise, so do the comparisons to other episodes of bit-in-the-teeth government power. But tyranny is often a two-way street; the Inquisitor thinks his parishioners incapable of freedom--but so do his parishioners. 

From Heyward:

Some aren’t even hoping they can assert control over a crisis by converting to its religion. They’ll settle for just having some MEANING, some simplicity, a sense that the righteous will fare better than the unbelievers, that virtue will be rewarded while sin is punished.

That’s a very common impulse with the Church of Covid, since the Beautiful Theories were so very obviously wrong. There isn’t much left of the faith except the visceral communal satisfaction of hoping unbelievers will be punished for their blasphemies with sickness and death.

That sort of thing happens with all of the crisis religions, although not usually as quickly and obviously as with the Church of Covid. Look at the endless stream of movies about how the world became an apocalyptic hellscape because people didn’t believe in global warming.

The last resort of every crisis religion, the last thing that puts asses in the pews, is that addiction to misery porn, the collective hope that unbelievers will suffer someday, and everyone will admit the True Faith was right all along as Judgement Day crashes down upon them. 

Coming Together

                                 

                               Coming Together

Who says politicians can't cooperate?

In June of 2018, virtually overnight, the Tappan Zee Bridge which spans the Hudson River from Nyack, NY to Tarrytown, NY was renamed the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge. Mario Cuomo was, of course, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s father. The suddenness of the name change surprised and angered many New York residents, who found the maneuver galling even for politics, and moreover even for New York State politics. That’s saying something.

With a little digging it was found that Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, had arranged to give $10M in taxpayer funds to expand a Republican-backed museum in Orange County. That evidently purchased the support necessary for a brisk rechristening of the span. (from an article by Peter Earle who wants to rename the bridge, “New York State Nursing Home Covid Victims Memorial Bridge.”)

Thomas

                                  Thomas

Curious.

Early last month Amazon deleted a documentary film about Justice Clarence Thomas from its popular streaming service. Titled “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” and culled from more than 30 hours of interviews with its subject, the film recounts Justice Thomas’s rise from poverty in segregated Georgia to Yale Law School and, eventually, to the Supreme Court. Along the way, viewers learn about the justice’s views on race, religion, politics, and the role of the judiciary.

The documentary began airing on PBS in May 2020 and streaming on Amazon in October. But it was taken down by Amazon on Feb. 8, according to the director, Michael Pack, and he has never been told why. “Our distributor, who’s the one who made the deal with Amazon, has repeatedly asked them for explanations but they haven’t given any,” Mr. Pack told me by phone this week. “They have the right to pull anything from their site, and they don’t have to give an explanation. So it’s not a contract violation. But many people have complained, and they haven’t put it back up.”--Riley in wsj

Sunday/Works

                          Sunday/Works

Today is the Fourth Sunday of Lent, hard to fathom in this Year of the Plague. The gospel is from part of Christ's conversation with Nicodemus. It is upbeat and hopeful with a dark assessment of man.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the verdict,
that the light came into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.

"Works" here has caused a lot of trouble as in the history of Christianity; there have been groups who felt salvation could come from a good, if unbelieving, heart. Paul writes this:

For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;
it is not from works, so no one may boast.

Wars--presumably with good hearts--have been fought over these lines. Christ is clearly stating that He is essential to salvation, that no atheistic good heart will suffice. This is black-and-white. A decision must be made.

Hopkins suffered with moments of imagining a life without God, with only 'works'. This is from one of his Poems of Desolation:

                           'I wake and feel'

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood grimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Some Debt Stats

 

                         Some Debt Stats

       As of March 1, 2021, the U.S. Treasury’s official figure for the debt of the federal government is $28.0 trillion—or more precisely—$28,004,376,276,999. This amounts to:

       $84,834 for every person living in the U.S.
       $216,933 for every household in the U.S.
       134% of annual U.S. economic output.
       7.7 times annual federal revenues.
       70% more than the combined consumer debt of every household in the U.S.

       Over the history of the United States, the national debt has averaged 31% of the nation’s annual economic output. 
In May 2020, the national debt reached 120% of the nation’s annual economic output, breaking a record set in 1946 for the highest level in the history of the United States. The previous high of 118% stemmed from World War II, the deadliest and most widespread conflict in world history. 
At the close of 2020, the national debt was 134% of the nation’s annual economic output, or 4.3 times its average over U.S. history.

       Federal law requires publicly traded corporations to account for their “explicit” and “implicit” liabilities and obligations. These include employee pensions and other financial burdens that companies have accrued but not paid for yet. This type of bookkeeping is called “accrual accounting.” 

      At the close of its 2019 fiscal year, the federal government had accrued roughly:

      $10.1 trillion ($10,084,000,000,000) in liabilities that are not accounted for in its publicly held national debt, such as federal employee retirement benefits, accounts payable, and environmental/disposal liabilities. 
      $35.2 trillion ($35,205,000,000,000) in unfunded obligations for current Social Security participants. 
      $42.3 trillion ($42,300,000,000,000) in unfunded obligations for current Medicare participants. 

These are federal liabilities and do not include the states.

Competing Ways

 

                                   Competing Ways

The challenge for an economy is to achieve coordination and improvement. Government and markets are two processes for doing so. Here is an interesting view.

"Market failure is real. In theory, if government officials could solve the calculation problem, they would provide incentives to increase or decrease the relevant activity to some theoretically optimal level. In practice, government does not steer the market to right quantity. Instead, government typically subsidizes demand and restricts supply, with countervailing effects on quantity but creating rents for narrow interest groups. This is true in housing, higher education, and health care." --Claremont

The Danger of Choice

 

                           The Danger of Choice

The changes of the last year have allowed the Left to show a bit more of themselves--and what they think of us.

In one of his recent New York Times columns (“Too Much Choice Is Hurting America,” March 1, 2021), Nobel economist Paul Krugman worries about the United States having become "a country in which many of us are actually offered too many choices, in ways that can do a lot of harm.
It’s true that both Economics 101 and conservative ideology say that more choice is always a good thing. In the real world, too much choice can be a big problem. …"

Lemieux wrote, "When Prof. Krugman states that “many of us are actually offered too many choices,” he doesn’t include himself, but only the poor or those who he thinks don’t have his intellect. What would he say if some intellectual told him that he has too many book choices?"

But the elite has confidence in themselves, not the little people. In the back of their minds, the elite are not sure freedom works.

Nancy's Subway

                                                        Nancy's Subway

The specifics of the new Stimulus Bill are hard to find but it has the feel of calling the fire department for an ashtray fire. Immunization to the Virus is expected to be completed by May. Much of the damage to the economy was not done by the Virus, it was done by the lockdown response to it. 

So the government causes the problem, then solves it?

Republicans, who have previously backed COVID-19 spending without any caution at all, said much of the current package was not necessary, highlighting elements like funding a subway near Pelosi's San Francisco district. Only 9% of the total would go directly toward fighting the virus, they said.

The 1.9-trillion package includes 350 billion dollars to help pandemic-hit state and local governments balance their budgets, a God-send to these badly run states but California's financial problems are much deeper than the lockdown and hardly the responsibility of North Dakota.

Among the unrelated provisions are a pension bailout, expansions of the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the child care tax credit; an increase in the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour; and Affordable Care Act expansions. I don't know if the Pakistani gender awareness program or the program designed to explain the motives behind emigration from Central America to the U.S. are still in the bill, or not.

 

When Politics Comes First

                          When Politics Comes First

Insincerity is in politics' very marrow. It has no political affiliation. This is from an article in WSJ on the efforts of some to cast doubt on the ability of the Trump administration to develop a vaccine and to disperse a safe vaccine honestly. (from Don)

President Biden has proposed an “unprecedented” information campaign to persuade people to get Covid-19 vaccinations. Why, when a pandemic has killed 500,000 Americans, does the public need to be convinced? In part because Mr. Biden and his allies spent 2020 stoking fear for political reasons.

The Biden campaign and scientists allied with it impugned the Food and Drug Administration’s independence and integrity. Kamala Harris maligned President Trump’s claims about the speed of vaccine development and questioned its safety and effectiveness. New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo cast doubt on FDA evaluations of Covid-19 vaccines and said states should conduct their own reviews. An Aug. 27 letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asking governors for help setting up vaccine distribution elicited a statement from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer questioning the safety of the vaccines in development. Media “fact checkers” said rapid vaccine development would take a “miracle.”

Between April 1-14 and Nov. 25-Dec. 8 the share of Americans who told pollsters they were likely to consent to vaccination declined from 74% to 56%, even though Pfizer and Moderna released strong vaccine safety and effectiveness results prior to the second survey. The decline occurred in both sexes and all age groups, education levels and racial groups. Many medical workers, including nursing-home staff, are also hesitant to be vaccinated.

Medical authorities were complicit in stoking these fears. Although June FDA guidance confirmed the agency wouldn’t “cut corners” and that expedited development would proceed “without sacrificing our standards for quality, safety, and efficacy,” a Sept. 10 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association claimed that “some” were concerned that political appointees would “insist” on authorizing a vaccine “over the recommendation of FDA career scientists.” The concerned “some” were never named, and no citation was given.

The editorial claimed FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn had “indicated that the FDA is willing to use an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for vaccines before phase 3 trials are complete.” It cited an Aug. 7 JAMA article by three FDA officials including Dr. Hahn and Peter Marks, head of the FDA center responsible for vaccine reviews. In fact, that article, titled “Unwavering Regulatory Safeguards for COVID-19 Vaccines,” didn’t signal a loosening of standards. It committed to issuing an EUA only once clinical trials demonstrate safety and effectiveness, which FDA guidance indicated could be based on final analysis of a phase 3 trial or on interim analysis of such a trial that met specified success and safety criteria and after public discussion at the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

Bowdler Reconsidered

 

                        Bowdler Reconsidered

Many restrictions people place on others are not based upon righteousness, they are protective. The Grand Inquisitor wants to control people because he thinks they are incapable of freedom.

"Bowdlerized" ("ISE" in England --"ISE" for any none Greek-based words-- or "IZE" in North America) is a fierce academic epithet because it is an accusation of something untrue, untrue on several levels. First, it is a change from the original, from the art from which it comes, so it is a counterfeit. Second, it is a denial of the art's truth, its essence. The motive is meaningless. Bowdler had a good motive for what he did; the process is a lie, a sacrifice of artistic truth for some reason, trivial or not, that is opposed to truth. Synonyms in the Thesaurus include: emasculate, alter, neuter, shorten, reduce, cut, abridge, castrate, spay, contract, foreshorten, demasculinize, expurgate, and abbreviate. Antiintellectual and declasse are not included but none are flattering.

Henrietta and Thomas Bowdler were English siblings who, in the early 1800's, prepared and published editions of Shakespeare’s works meant for women and children and for families to read together. They wanted people exposed to these great works but were eager to eliminate any controversial or offensive material they felt inappropriate for women and children. (It may well be that this approach exposed many to the genius of Shakespeare who might well have not were the material not scrubbed.) In 1818 Bowdler published his edition of 'Shakespeare,' the work by which he is best known. Its title ran: 'The Family Shakespeare in ten volumes; in which nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.' In the preface Thomas Bowdler wrote: 'Many words and expressions occur which are of so indecent a nature as to render it highly desirable that they should be erased.' He also complained of the unnecessary and frivolous allusions to Scripture, which 'call imperiously for their erasement.' Four editions were published before 1824, and others appeared in 1831, 1853, and 1861. During the last years of his life Bowdler was engaged in rewriting Gibbon's 'History.' The work was completed just before his death in 1825, and published in six volumes by his nephew Thomas.

He has always been reviled for his prudery, his destructive approach which can only be characterized as non-artistic, and his willingness to sacrifice the art and truth of genius to a lesser god. He was, however, not alone. Samuel Johnson said that Cordelia's death in Lear was too painful to be endured. Mr. Nahum Tate agreed so much he rewrote it. In his version Cordelia lives, marries Edger and everyone lives happily ever after. His play was quite successful. It first appeared in 1681, some seventy-five years after Shakespeare's version, and is believed to have replaced Shakespeare's version on the English stage in whole or in part until 1838. While many critics sneered and dismissed it, Samuel Johnson quite approved. The memorable Lear of David Garrick was Tate's!

Nor is this a behavior of older and rigid times. When Taming of the Shrew was staged in New York at their Shakespeare Festival in 1990, it was bowdlerized to dilute the play's misogynist sentiments, sort of the essence of the play.

The sacrifice of truth for sensibilities never ends, perhaps because the targets are endless. We must make Julia's confessor a lay adviser, the Merchant a pedantic Calvinist, substitute a jousting contest for Agincourt, a swede for the Moor, but maybe a Moor for Henry the Fifth. And no dwarfs. Or madmen. Or hunchbacks.

So we cancel what is unpleasant, regardless of its value. And maybe we can be more appreciative of the 1619 Atrocity for, despite its wide-eyed calumny, we all may be better for it.

So it seems, for all its faults, to Bowdlerize is Politically Correct.

Sunday/Cleansing of the Temple

 

                  Sunday/Cleansing of the Temple                  

This week is the "Cleansing of the Temple," reported in all four evangelists. Many of Christ's quotes are from the Old Testament.

The people of Israel owed the firstborn male of all domestic animals (you could buy a "pure" substitute at the Temple) and every firstborn male child was "ransomed" for five shekels. So the Temple had become a bank, with vast holdings.

I could never come to a good understanding of Christ's anger here, his physical and human reaction. The bigger picture is, of course, Christ's seeing Himself as the Temple.

George Herbert:

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

                              Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

                             From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                             If I lacked any thing.

 

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

                             Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

                             I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                             Who made the eyes but I?

 

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

                             Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

                             My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                             So I did sit and eat.

Covid-Speak

 

                                   Covid-Speak

A comment by an American officer after the carpet bombing of a Vietnamese town during the Battle of Ben Tre in 1968: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.” (As reported by legendary war journalist Peter Arnett.)

Some guy named Jones has been collecting such inanities--he has an anti-Covid hysteria bias--and here are some, though I'm not so sure about them. But the picture's funny.

BREATH IS DEATH
SOLITUDE IS SOLIDARITY

FEAR IS HOPE

DEBATE IS TREASON
SPEECH IS VIOLENCE
POLITICS IS SCIENCE
MODELS ARE FACTS
EVIDENCE IS LIES
DEATHS SAVE LIVES
FRIENDS ARE ENEMIES
LOCKDOWN IS LIBERTY
SAFETY IS FREEDOM

 

The Whitehall Variant

                                                     The Whitehall Variant

Some funny stuff from the Brits, who seem to be increasingly upset over the management, of sorts, of the Virus. This from one Allison Pearson:

Another week, another Covid variant on the loose. Watch out! I refer, of course, to the deeply worrying Whitehall variant.

The Whitehall variant is rapidly transmitted by scientific advisers whenever there is encouraging news. The better the news, the more aggressive the variant.

The Whitehall strain of Covid-19 is highly contagious and is easily caught by politicians in the same room as members of Sage. Symptoms include a flustered, shifty appearance and an ability to speak only in what grammarians call the “Type 2 conditional”. For example: “This new variant may be more resistant to vaccines.” Or: “This new variant could be more lethal.”

Invariably, after 10 days or so, those speculative statements are proven to be groundless. Turns out our two terrific vaccines can cope just fine. But, by then, it’s too late. The Whitehall variant has caused a fresh outbreak of fear in the population just as they were starting to glimpse the end of lockdown. 

Accords

 

                                                           Accords

The Americans have rejoined the Paris Accords. Gaia moved.

Opposition to the Accords in the U.S. is misunderstood--or purposely mis-analyzed. It is a treaty purporting to address a debatable scientific climate thesis that is structured as a wish list, without any judicial or enforcement arm, and which excludes the major offenders of the thesis. As such, it is symbolic and dishonest, the perfect entity of politicians but not honorable men.

But that is not the objection by many in the U.S. Our world is glutted with symbolic insincerity. The objection in the U.S. is over how this Treaty was entered: it was signed by the President and, in this country, treaties are approved by the Senate. It is quite rigid. The Senate. Government is a collection of mutually agreed upon concepts, laws, and processes. None of those elements can be by-passed for "the common good," or the "betterment of veterans," or "the children" and have the structured government remain.

Running the government on two sets of intellectual books will fail.

Perils of Equity

 

                           Perils of Equity

"Equity" has crept into the political conversation, unbidden and subtle as an odor. It is a profound distortion of the American historical debate and confronting it requires some understanding of the true nature of the country, its creation and energy. Such insight is mundane now.

Here is a heartfelt observation:

"The replacement of the word “equality” with “equity” was a subtle yet deliberate move by politicians, activists, the mainstream media, and the rest of the ruling class in the hopes that people would think the terms hold the same meaning. Equality and equity are not synonymous. In fact, they are in direct conflict. Equity requires uniform outcome and uniform outcome requires unequal standards — certain rules apply to some but not to others.

Our obsession with equity has created a caste system that actively segregates, discriminates, and judges based on sex, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity. Your individual characteristics, which you have no control over, are now either your greatest asset or biggest deficit. In order to justify the logic of discriminating based on superficial characteristics, you must buy into the notion that our entire country is entrenched in a system of oppression towards minorities in each of these categories. If this were true, then no amount of equity councils or policy changes could rectify the unjust system. The system cannot cure itself if the very system is the problem — the system itself must be destroyed.
…..
Inequality and unequal treatment are the foundation of equity, and discrimination and racism are the building blocks. Equity is a house that will never cease to be under construction. We can keep trying to take those building blocks and stack them as high as we want, yet we will never see a world where disparity does not exist and where outcome is uniform. We will only continue to teach our children that the most important thing about them is their skin color or sexual orientation, and that the content of their character, individual choices, and abilities are of no consequence. We will continue to give the system power to alleviate “problems” that every individual, regardless of identity, has the power to alleviate themselves.

Equal treatment, equality under the law, and equality of opportunity must all come crumbling down in order to keep the dream of equity alive. Liberty, meritocracy, and individual responsibility must die in order to sustain a system run on the misguided view of social justice. However, equity will always be a dream and justice will never come."

--with some changes from Alyssa Ahlgren’s Alpha News commentary “The Bigotry of Equity“

 

Murray

 

                               

                                    Murray

Charles Murray is famous for "The Bell Curve," a study that purports to examine racial differences and offer solutions to the societal problems they cause. It created a furor because it challenged people with data, data many people did not understand and could not evaluate in context. Murray has a new book coming out on June 15 titled “Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America.” He is nothing if not brave. Interestingly, most of his data is seen by Americans as indicative of internal threats rather than the serious international threat it implies.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart fIoat free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have 1) different violent crime rates and 2) different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.

What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.

We on the center-left and center-right who are the American Creed’s natural defenders have painted ourselves into a corner. We have been unwilling to say openly that different groups have significant group differences. Since we have not been willing to say that, we have been left defenseless against the claims that racism is to blame. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer. We must. Facing Reality is a step in that direction.

Success Sequence

 

                    Success Sequence

Researchers call this formula the “success sequence.”

1. Finish high school.

2. Get a full-time job once you finish school.

3. Get married before you have children.

Wendy Wang's research shows 97% of Millennials who follow what has been called the “success sequence”—that is, who get at least a high school degree, work, and then marry before having any children, in that order—are not poor by the time they reach their prime young adult years (ages 28-34). (There is an argument that the full-time-job factor is so powerful as to be a stand-alone-factor.)

So childbirth--the very engine of the species' future--is a great threat to individual success. Interestingly, the notion of cultural factors, educational factors, and the like deny the underlying reality: choice. A factor--huge factor--that is part of the country's marrow. Everyone has the ability to manage their reproductive capacity. Everyone. So, why not?