Mark Steyn is always funny. But behind the wit is a dark truth: on the slippery slope where multiculturalists live and move and have their being, your facts are merely opinions. Their opinions — the multiculturalists’ ruling dogmas — are incontrovertible facts, they are the credos which every thinking sensitive, feeling person accepts as gospel truths and can recite by heart. They include the enthronement of worthy victims and the promulgation of chronic aggrievement as a constitutional right.
The Counterjihad is a subset within the larger pushback against the damage multiculturalism inflicts on the West in particular, though the damage proceeds apace in Third World primitive societies that buy into the ruling dogma for their own benefit. Especially do the despots who rule these places buy the benefits. Their unfree citizens? Not so much.
Thus we will continue to report on the depredations inflicted by the politically correct, multicultural fallacies that wreak such harm. These restrictions through which the Political Class attempts to eradicate our “ancient liberties” are impoverishing us all.
Let me amend that: our liberties aren’t ancient so much as they are inherent in the human condition, but all too often honored in the breach rather than the reality. The damage to the West’s cultural fabric by the Marxist/Islamic juggernaut has been grievous and unjust; no surer proof of that destruction is the ongoing disappearance of the middle class. Watch this amazing graphic to see the middle class vanish over decades in just one city (Chicago), which is now deeply in debt and floundering on the path to Detroit’s fate. Is it happening in Europe, too? I don’t know, but in America the pace of the ruination is increasing; that destruction is aided and abetted by Islam’s weapons of discord, divisiveness, and the push for an aggrieved victim class.
In the video, Mr. Steyn points out what one “tiny, miserable grey island in the North Atlantic” managed to accomplish. The great horror is the ways in which that hard-won knowledge is being buried beneath the strew and slander of the deliberate ignorance of those who want only its subjugation under a theocratic supremacy. Those currently in power chant a mantra about the ways “poverty breeds ignorance”, etc., while their own educated ignorance reduces all facts to mere opinion.
The latest strong-arming of those who dissent from their gospel? Numerous pronouncements are being issued by multiculturalists in the Anglosphere that climate “dissenters/deniers” should be jailed or otherwise silenced for their refusal to bow to the politically correct Truths proving that it is the dastardly behavior of human beings which is surely causing the earth to heat up to irrevocably dangerous levels.
Here’s a post noting the increasingly alarmist nature of the despotic desire to close the climate argument since ‘the consensus is decided’. More likely, ‘the fix is in’. Too much money — not to mention science reputations — has been shoveled into projects of dubious value for the investors to be able to let go easily.
That post is just one observation of the frantic chorus of “Silence Them” which is proliferating throughout the multicultural press and purported science departments in academia. You can do a search using a string similar to this: climate change deniers punishment. You’ll find a surprising number of countries ready to pounce.
A link to one such call for punishment, Crackdown ordered on climate-change sceptics led to a wall, a subscription firewall, which provided a snip and demanded that you pay a toll before proceeding. Sorry, but the London Times will get none of my RightWingExtremists lucre. Fortunately the snip of the news report they permitted you to see contained a link to the story about The Commons Science and Technology Committee. This CSTC appears to be an engine helping to drive this “crackdown”.
[An aside: Perhaps our British readers can tell me if the photo accompanying the firewalled news was some kind of code? The image showed an ancient, impeccably attired personage, one Lord Lawson, captioned as a “climate sceptic”. Is this meant to communicate to the reader that only the doddering upper upper classes — those with titles (inherited titles, one presumes) would be so disengaged from reality as to dissent from the gospel of the commoners? Please advise on the sub-text, if any.]
Here is the snip below Lord Lawson’s photo:
Ministers who question the majority view among scientists about climate change should “shut up” and instead repeat the Government line on the issue, according to MPs.
The BBC should also give less airtime to climate sceptics and its editors should seek special clearance to interview them, according to the Commons Science and Technology Committee. Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labour chairman, said that appearances on radio and television by climate sceptics such as Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of he Exchequer, should be accompanied by “health warnings”.
“Health warnings”? Do any of these fervent believers realize the contempt ordinary folk experience when they read one of these credos pasted prominently on yet another benign product?? We had occasion to pick up a new box of salt the other day and on the package was a prominent Big Bro warning to “use salt responsibly”…
Here is the pdf for that Science and Technology Committee’s views on climate change and public policy. Scrolling through the Table of Contents one gathers that the main concern is ignorant citizens who fail to follow obediently in the Henny Penny logic of the Committee’s proclamations. Their thesis appears to be that the only thing standing in the way of people’s comprehension of this dire situation is ignorance. The cure is more and better “communication”, ladled on in unremitting gobs. It’s akin to the old joke about the English matron traveling abroad and coming to a place where there were no English speakers. Her solution was to speak English loudly and slowly and repeatedly. This would eventually lead to “communication” with these ignorant folk. Obviously that method still prevails and has been heartily adopted by the Science Committee as the sure fire way to change hearts and minds.
That pdf from Parliament will someday be of historical interest — in the same way we look at scientific papers devoted to, say, luminiferous aether. Even though it has long since been discredited, the theory of aether was indeed an elegant ‘truth’ in its time.
The theory of luminiferous aether has been disproved?! I think not!
Oh well. Relativity is just some intuition a European had anyway. Keep your aether – use the luminiference to light yo’ ceegars, as Pogo’s Albert might say.
Mark Steyn, a true Renaissance man. Is there any topic he cannot expound on brilliantly? I just hope he has the strength to do so…forever.
Re the map we studied in our schoolrooms the day before yesterday in Quebec: The British Empire was all in pink. How I do remember the teacher pulling the rolling maps down and quizzing us all on Geography. Who lived where, who wore what, what was their main export, what was their political system etc. When my own kids studied geography, how horrified was I that their first assignments were to make a map of their way to school. What did they see? How insular. It deteriorated from there. I taught them real Geography, as I saw it. Of the great big wide and wonderful world and all the people in it. They tell me they are grateful. Hope they teach their own kids and that there is memory from what used to be a classical education. I love Google too, but if one doesn’t build a sound foundation, the house is likely to fall down.
We have malware, contagious thought begun by the postmodernists–“reality is subjective; truth is relative to time and place; the collective is the operative unit, not the individual”–and this is spread by the universities as fomites throughout the boundaries of the western civilization intellectual network. This network is like the brain of the west and is probably roughly the size of the English Internet. The thought fads are like seizure activity occurring in one lobe of the brain. In the past, the west’s thinking was partitioned into a more fractal geometry and large insanities were stopped at the borders. These borders were the smaller geographic national boundaries as well as the ranges of radio and TV and movie distribution contracts. With the present net and social media, insanities can get reinforced and gain sinusoidal reverberations so that we sense the whole world is going crazy. The boundaries of our collective hive brain are so much larger now.
But this new way our collective brain is working also gives us more virtual synapses–intelligence–to counter malware. I think we can expect large swings/oscillations to occur soon where globalization, climate change, and transnational progressivism will take a big hit.
If you’re looking for a good read along these lines: “In Defense of Elitism” by William A. Henry III. It contains the infamous line “there’s a big difference between a country that puts a man on the moon and one that puts a bone in its nose.”
Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements
Abstract
It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.
Fuhai Hong⇑ and
Xiaojian Zhao
+ Author Affiliations
Fuhai Hong is an assistant professor in the Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University. Xiaojian Zhao is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Correspondence may be sent to: fhhong@ntu.edu.sg.
The authors thank Larry Karp, Madhu Khanna, Jinhua Zhao, two anonymous referees, and participants in the Conference on Global Environmental Challenges: the Role of China for their helpful comments.
[NOTE: Edited for clarity by admin]
I’m not sure what this means.Are the authors saying that “information manipulation” (better known as “making stuff up”) may be a falsehood in the short run but that lack of integrity will be compensated for by a an “eventually enhanced global welfare”?
Is this a joke? If not, we’re in deep doodoo if this is what academics are openly proposing.
Sort of like Dan Rather’s documents on George W. Bush: “Fake but accurate.”
“Mark Steyn is always funny…”
Yes, he’s a very talented man. But he’s not been good for the counter-jihad. Larry Auster points out how:
For this magnificent and brilliant speech, delivered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the House of Commons in June 1940, the Claremont Institute has announced that it will posthumously give Mr. Churchill its prestigious Mark Steyn award…
The British people have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can. Much of the so-called Western world will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands or Britain, but they will be merely designations for real estate, because they will have been taken over by Nazi Germany.
http://isteve.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/larry-auster-on-mark-steyn.html
Theodore Dalrymple is another talented man who has not opposed mass immigration or pointed out that the only way to have good relations with Muslims is not to have them within your borders.
iSteve can’t even manage to keep up a blog. The link at the bottom of that piece is a 404, page missing. He’s a fine one to criticise Mark Steyn, whose hilarious books are extremely well-researched and referenced.
I’ve never heard of iSteve, and looking down the list of links to his own writings, it’s clear that writing about islam is of no more than extremely marginal interest to him. Meanwhile, Steyn who does criticise islam in best-selling books, gets out and does public engagements where he would easily be the target of a muslim or left-wing shooter.
“But the New World, with all its power and might, is still safe and thriving. I intend to move there immediately, and take up residence in New Hampshire, where I will write gloating columns about Europe’s imminent demise. ”
And since Steyn has gone on to write “After America”, so even that pathetic jibe fails.
The right-wing seems to be full of loons who like to bitch about others not being quite what they want them to be. Nothing’s stopping iSteve from writing books like Steyn which top the best-seller list. Apart that is from his lack of wit, and the probability that 90% of Americans don’t share his apparent obsession with miscegenation. http://www.isteve.com/Articles_Interracial_Marriage.htm
Why on earth should we care what iSteve thinks? I’ve written 1000x more on islam, and I don’t think I’m in any position to bitch about what Steyn writes, or what Spencer writes. If I think they are missing some important angle, I will go out and write that book myself. Steyn’s analysis is right – the west is lost because those people who should be out defending it are just bitching about their allies.
To Joe’s heart-felt riposte-
Steyn’s analysis is right – the west is lost because those people who should be out defending it are just bitching about their allies.
I can only say “Amen”. But I wonder if across the spectrum of political beliefs (or any other orthodoxies you care to name) there isn’t a pattern of fissioning going on? Like-minded groups who grow ever smaller as their dogmas become narrower.
One example is the fractioning over Tommy Robinson: commenters who came on here to complain that TR was doing it wrong – even though they had zero leadership qualities themselves and had done zip toward bettering anything…but they were experts at pointing out what others couldashoulda done.
Things on the Left are no better. Leave 3 comrades in a room and soon there will be one remaining, the others having been removed for their lack of correctness…
The West is lost? Then what’s the bloody point of this blog?
Where did I say the West is “lost”? It is certainly changing at a fast rate and the old verities need new language and frames of reference. The question of the fate of “the West” will very much depend on what happens in the huge demographic implosion due to hit ca 2050. It will be unprecedented, this great shrinkage of the world population. For the first time it won’t be brought about by pestilence, famine or war but rather by (among other things) the large die-off due to ageing, and an ancillary decision on the part of many people – probably more women than men – to remain childless. Those who are still alive and made that choice may find themselves in a slough of regret. But even that is hard to predict.
I recommend Gregory Copley’s book on the sidebar: UNCivilization. The Left loathes him and is threatened by his ideas. Unfortunately for them, a fair number of his predictions turned out to be correct. one thing he says repeatedly, in different ways, is that the intensely urban centers are going to have to build alliances with their contiguous rural sections…
All generations face intense change. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a pessimist living through World War II in, say 1943…or one of the Henny Pennys in the 50s and 60s who were sure we were all going to be blown away…
Where did I say the West is “lost”?
“To Joe’s heart-felt riposte-
“Steyn’s analysis is right – the west is lost because those people who should be out defending it are just bitching about their allies.
“I can only say “Amen”. ”
You may not have said the words “the West is lost” — but to those words you said “Amen”.
AAGHH – Hesperado ya got me. A thumping body blow. I may not recover…
So why don’t those that advocate that islam can be moderated and reformed in western societies put their weight behind TR and the Quilliam Foundation.
Is the counter-jihad now a balancing weight or is it a anti-jihad movement.
This is not about TR, to frame it that way takes the CJ into the build them up knock them down world of celebrity politics.
Steve Sailer is preoccupied with matters that I find offensive, or at least some of them are. I have mixed race family members and his concern with racial purity is not where I want to go.
I disagree that Mark Steyn has not been ‘good’ for the CounterJihad. To leave the meta issue of his worth to our work for a moment, I’ll deal with content: at the 2012 Brussels Process Conference, Mr. Steyn introduced the keynote speaker, gratis.
I agree re Mr Dalrymple. He hasn’t stepped up to the plate. I will say in his favor that he is NOT a socialist and says so quite clearly. But to rake the underclass in Britain over the coals without ever addressing the sad fact that it is those folks who are most impacted and persecuted by massive immigration is unconscionable.
… dissent from the gospel of the commoners?
The only green politics the socially inferior concerned themselves with was the green giro cheques of the dole that compensated them for the destruction of British industry on an environment-friendly and neoliberal (un)sustainability agenda. Environmental elitism and green politics can hardly be blamed on the UK socially inferior class.
Nigel Lawson as “climate sceptic” could be code for class traitor, his green scepticism being a betrayal of the neoliberal environment and sustainability elite and Mrs T’s global warming legacy.
Climate Change History – Margaret Thatcher – Speech on Global Environment to UN (1989)
Thanks. So there may indeed by a sub-text to that photo after all??
I had no idea MT was one of the “sustainability elite”.[edit: though I will say on her behalf that back when she made that address most of us thought the “facts” her advisors had given her were correct. So she wasn’t alone.]
Meanwhile, our current elites continue to talk with very little practical “walk” to help ‘developing’ countries avoid our mistakes. Thus do poor farming practices in Africa blow their topsoil over to England.
Sad beyond words…
Originally Baroness Thatcher was a believer but her scientific training eventually asserted itself ad she saw the light and condemned it.
Lord Lawson has set up an excellent foundation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Like many other so called deniers he is quite willing to accept that there is climate change and that CO2 and water vapour are “greenhouse” gases but his contention is that any change will not be catastrophic and that adaptation is the answer. He wrote an excellent book on the climate panic and pointed out that AGW was effectively a new religion.
That speech of Thatcher’s reminded me of this event, a few short weeks ago…
Confessions of a ‘Greenpeace Dropout’ to the U.S. Senate on climate change
…readers may recall that since Dr. Moore has decided to speak out against global warming and for Golden Rice, Greenpeace is trying to disappear his status with the organization, much like people were disappeared in Soviet Russia.
Dr. Moore was the co-founder of Greenpeace. In February of this year, he told the US Senate:
So Thatcher was taken in, like the rest of us. And I’ll bet when the talking heads were predicting world famine by 2000, many believed it. I was one who believed…and one who became a climate change agnostic as a result. The truth is, no one knows what is happening with our ‘climate’ and no one knows the real engine of change. All we can say with certainty is that it is always in flux.
Dr Moore left a comment at that post. This copy came through with the links intact, but I don’t know if they work, but if you click the “Confessions” URL, above, you can read the whole thing.
=======================================================
Quote ‘those with titles (inherited titles, one presumes)’
One presumes wrongly !
Lord (Nigel) Lawson of Blaby was awarded a life peerage. Life peerages are often awarded to long serving politicians who have held various senior positions in govt (a few long serving politicians who have held senior positions in ‘opposition’ also get these peerages). They allow the politician in question to stand down from their seat in the House of Commons but still be able to take part in the political process in the ‘other place’ !
Lawson was a long serving and respected Conservative MP who had held various positions including Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Some politicians make a point of letting it be publicly known that they are not interested in a life peerage after they retire from senior office. Sir WS Churchill turned down various offers of peerages making it clear ‘He had been born a commoner and would die a commoner’. Sir John Major has also refused offers of a peerage.
BTW. Lord Lawson’s daughter is Nigella Lawson the TV cook.
Thank you for addressing my query and setting me straight about my presumptions. I sincerely apologize if my ignorance raised your ire, but I asked it in good faith. My intent was to understand the Times’ possible motive in using his photo.
As an American I don’t know this Lord Lawson; nonetheless his bespoke tailoring was/ is impressive. Given the Times’ decision to use his picture to grace their report about the Commons’ push to silence climate scepticism I simply wondered about a possible subtext. From what you say, there wasn’t one. A nice change.
And even more, as an American who has been without a TV since the last century, I wouldn’t know mi’lord’s daughter if I fell over her. No doubt she’s very nice, too, but I spend my time reading Diana West and Caroline Glick, et al. And Mark Steyn, too. Plus the usual conservative economists for fun.
Besides not having a TV, I’m my own favorite cook.
Cracks are beginning to appear in the consensus as reported by Janet Daley at the Daily Telegraph – not specifically on multiculturalism perhaps, rather the state of clinical delusion of which pc/mc is an important component:
“systematic self-deception on a scale that would seem to call for medical treatment. Or else, of course, it is intellectual dishonesty of such epic proportions that we must ask ourselves how we have got to this point. How have we arrived at the stage where politicians and their friends actually believe that if they tell a lie often enough, and with enough unblinking confidence, the public will decide they must distrust their own judgments?”
Read it all at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10746482/The-political-class-is-mired-in-delusion.html
@JP So I took your advice and did read it all. Interesting in a number of ways. Ms. Daley says, in part:
…I don’t think people are lying when they say that Britain’s membership of the EU is not at (or even very near) the top of their list of concerns. Because – put like that – the matter seems so abstract and arcane. Most respondents to a professional pollster would not feel confident enough to list in any sort of detail what might be the advantages or disadvantages of membership. But the conclusion that most of the governing class draws from this – that Europe as an issue will not affect elections – is quite wrong.
In order to get any significant understanding of public feeling, an opinion poll question must provide some information that makes the issue relevant to daily life. Guess what might happen if polls or focus groups were to question voters on a much more specific matter: do you believe that the EU rule that permits unlimited movement of peoples from one member country to another has had a good or bad effect on Britain? Do you personally feel that you have benefited or been disadvantaged by that rule?
I can well imagine that the issue of Europe would, at that point, leap into life as an electoral factor.
Ms. Daley has found the crux of the matter when it comes to useless polls. Yes, I think some people – especially the non-drones who don’t believe the socialist gospel of the Political Class – have learned to keep their ideas close to the vest. But if they were asked a question from within a genuine context like that, what a difference it would make.
Polls are meaningless bec they ask meaningless questions. Here in the US, if, instead of asking if a person “approved of the job Mr Obama is doing”, the pollster asked for specifics – “What part of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy do you most like and why do you like it?” – he’d get very different answers. Everything from “I really like the way he doesn’t do anything” to “whatchu talkin’ ’bout? He Da Man, man”.
Sure would change the territory of polls, which are currently a wasteland. Or a swamp. Take your pick.