Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics: Sunset to Moonrise

I took a walk through part of down-town Vancouver, Canada during the Olympic Games festivities. This is some of what I saw of local life:

I saw that I hung my hat on a lost oil pump made art. Energy from yesteryear now immortalised in an abandoned parking lot. A faded hat, a barren gas pump, a dying day.

I saw the sun going down on a funeral chapel, casting a dark shadow in the deep-cut stone.
The former Central Business district of the city is now a mile-long stretch of derelict buildings and storefronts for marijuana sellers, pawnbrokers, convenience stores selling crack pipes under the counter, and an endless variety of "social agencies" for mental patients and drug addicts and those who just gave up and decided to live downtown in the midst of the mess of it all. Former office buildings that became skidroad hotels finally became abandoned, high hopes and grandiosity regal in name only.
No point to complain. The game goes on, and some win and some lose and most sit back and watch.
During this Olympic season in the city some have made themselves into political statements, pitching tents in empty lots in the former business district; and some have made statements about those statements.
Some are upset that the former Woodwards building, a famous landmark in the city, was "gentrified," claiming that such is a reflection of the distortion of capitalism in the city on "the poor." I think it's kind of pretty, myself.
But some see it as distortion. What do I know? I'm a tourist here.
I just try to get along.
If the sticker on the abandoned wicket window says "Do Not Smoke ANYTHING Here," I just cast my gaze upward and pay no attention to what's happening in front of my eyes. It's my life, and D is for Dag.
America is beating Canada at hockey. Life goes on, and tomorrow things might change. I figure much of the game depends on how I want to see things. It's in our own hands, I think so.
A day dies, a night begins; the sun sets and out comes the moon. Life goes on, a game for the living. I kind of like it. This is often enough a good city to like it in.
So, till next time, good-night to you, dear reader, for now, from Vancouver, Canada.

Radio Memories: Imagining The Unpossible

Trivia time! Who said the following: “Science fiction is that field of literature which deals with human response to advances in science or technology.”

Was it:

A) Ray Bradbury
B) Isaac Asimov
C) Jules Verne
D) Erich Fromm
The answer can be heard below, secreted within this week’s Radio Memories.

Every Sunday we recharge our sense of wonder by tuning in to the days before television, a time when listeners orchestrated a world within their imagination, through listening to the lost art of radio drama… the theater of the mind.

The imaginative medium of radio drama did not outlive the arrival of the visual medium of television, a competitor which ironically left very little to the imagination. The twilight of dramatic radio saw much creativity and experimentation, a final act celebrating all that made the older medium different from the technological upstart that displaced it in the hearts and homes of families across North America.

As interest in television grew, interest dwindled in preserving the past accomplishments of the medium it displaced. Therefore much of radio’s early artistic legacy was consumed in self-destructive cleansings of closets, cupboards and backroom shelves, program archives forsaken by the networks that were now looking to the idiot box for their futures, and fortunes.

This week’s offering is from the 1955-58 series Biography In Sound. It tantalizes us to imagine the cultural treasures we have probably lost, and how close we came to losing far more than we did.

Our episode today was originally broadcast back on Tuesday December 4th, 1956, and is entitled “A Ticket To The Moon”.

Biography In Sound was not, strictly speaking, radio drama. It was instead, as suggested by the series’ title, a weekly biography undertaken on a particular person or, less frequently, a particular subject. This episode engages listeners in a stimulating biography of science-fiction, through such tour guides as prolific authors Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, pioneering publisher (and author in his own right) John W. Campbell, filmmaker George Pal, scientists like Willy Ley, and shaper of fandom Forrest J. Ackerman.

Their ideas on the distinctions between science fiction and fantasy, how they saw science-fiction influencing their time, and their predictions on where that influence might lead us, make for fascinating, thought-provoking listening to our modern ears today.

Consider the following quote as a teaser, from forementioned SF pioneer John W. Campbell:

“Our language… you might say our language lacks a word. We have the word ‘impossible’, but we need to differentiate between two sorts of things. The impossible is that which, by definition, can never be done. We need another word: unpossible, that which can’t be done just yet. At the present time it is unpossible to buy a ticket to Mars. That does not mean that it is impossible; eventually that can be done.”

While many episodes of Biography In Sound have survived (for our previous visit with this remarkable series, go here, to listen to their inspiring program devoted to theatrical legend George M. Cohan), there are nevertheless quite a few holes in the series multi-year run.

What insights, observations, revelations, did we lose, in those missing episodes... and in the uncountable hours of radio programming in general that has been consigned to oblivion?

What treasures are we taking for granted today, that are destined to be lost in their turn? Destined, perhaps, due to a lack of imagination, a lessening in our ability to wonder about the future, and the unpossible...

Previous 2010 Radio Memories posts:

Mr President: Romance In The White House
Frontier Fighters: George Pickett

Destination Freedom: Citizen Toussaint [Toussaint L'Ouverture]

Ports Of Call: Haiti

For a list of our 2009 Radio Memories listings, go here.

Great Moments In British Journalism: "What's That On His Head?"

A sobering glimpse into the state of religious education in modern Great Britain, courtesy of two British reporters baffled by the sight of Catholic Vice-President Joe Biden giving a press conference on Ash Wednesday.



Notice the little dig they try to get in at Vancouver's expense, in the following transcribed excerpt:

[0:28] British reporterette: "What's happened to his head? I'm sure that's what everyone is asking at home."

British reporter: "Yes, I don't know. That's the simple answer."

British reporterette: "It looks like he's walked into a door, doesn't he! [laughs] Yeah, I'm sure that's one of the questions that the networks will be asking."

British reporter: "He's been up in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, and was the face of the administration there, so whether there was some accident on what little ice there's been up in Vancouver, we don't know. But no doubt as a result of this appearance, we will get an opportunity to ask his spokespeople, what the cause of that is."

British reporterette: [giggles]

I'd make a snide comment of my own, but the weather is so beautiful today, I'm instead going to take advantage of the "little ice there's been up in Vancouver", debate which sweater I should wear as I go for a walk under yet another cloudless sky, bask in the warm sunshine and buy a hotdog from the friendly couple on the corner.

[Hat Tip to this morning's episode of my favorite Minnesota radio show, the First Team of the Patriot's Northern Alliance Radio Network]

U.S. Beats Germany in Men's Figure Skating at Vancouver 2010 Olympics

In spite of my colleagues here not being too enthused about the Olympics, I find myself cheering the latest news that America has beaten the Germans in Men's figure skating, frankly, not one of my favourite spectator sports.

Here's a video of us cleaning German glocks gesundheit!

Olympic Thoughts

I have no interest in the Olympic Games, haven't watched a second of them on tv, don't care if Canada wins one medal or one thousand, and bemoan the expenses as a colossal waste of time and money. Olympics? Bah Humbug.

Having said that, I should be honest and confess that part of me, nevertheless, is having a wonderful time.

If you are a people-watcher, that is, someone who loves parking himself on a park bench in order to enjoy the parade of personalities that strolls by, you will find the Olympics as a city-wide art gallery, an endless exposition on the art of being human.

There are so many fascinating vignettes playing themselves out everywhere you look, so many riveting scenes to study, and absorb, so many fun tableaus that reveal all the little quirks and bemusements that are such a part of the contradiction of folly and glory involved in living a human life.

There is so much change occurring to such a wide range of people, placed in so many new situations, that surely there is drama and conflict enough for any novelist to find material for a dozen stories, for a painter to fill a hundred canvases.

It's the small things that stick out in my mind. I will definitely remember the sight of lifeguards at city streetcorners, barking advice into loudspeakers for the sake of tourists drowning in confusion.

The mecca for people-watchers these days must be the barrier surrounding the Olympic Flame; whether they know what awaits them or not, everyone arrives with a hopeful look, which melts away once in view of the controversial barrier. How do they handle their disappointment? Some put on a brave face and make the best of it, clowning around with theatrical poses making it look like they are themselves holding the flame high atop the scenic Burrard Inlet. Others complain to anyone within earshot, and one guy left without taking a single photo, he was so disillusioned.

People tend to pause and wonder: what would I have done here, to resolve the contradictory needs of security and access. Eavesdropping on the resulting conversations, the bystander will be feasted to an endlessly varied series of opinions and counter-proposals; it's too bad the event planners didn't start a blog, or other interactive outreach effort ahead of time, to let the public get all these ideas on the record much earlier, so that many of the better suggestions coming from the common sense of the common man could have been included within the smaller number of ideas that a small number of "official" minds had on the boards.

Maybe that fence will bring one good change to the world: a clearer appreciation of the perils of total top-down planning.

I have no love for the Olympic Games, but I admit that a small part of me will be sad when the last tourist leaves after the last ceremony, and we go back to the less-crowded, emptier streets of old, giving us our Seawall back... as gorgeous as the view of the mountains may be, it pales in fascination to the feelings invoked by the view of a bubbling sea of humanity.

Obama, Occidental playboy

I'm sure this interview of Dr. John Drew who speaks about knowing Obama in their college days has already been seen by many. But I thought it worth linking because it is both insightful on the nature of the man who became President and it does little to resolve the question that grips many on the anti-Obama side of the political spectrum: Who is this guy? Is he just a particularly successful street hustler, or a committed socialist with a well-planned agenda to transform America? Those of us who have noted Obama's limited intellectual skills cannot discount the latter possibility because socialism is, above all else, the doctrine of those with an incompetent grasp of human realities. In other words, the question can't be resolved because the two popular positions are not entirely mutually exclusive (no matter how grand one's "theory", or one's hustle, one cannot transform America from on high; one can only destroy it as Tom Bertonneau notes a few posts below). In any case, Drew provides ammunition for those who hold my contention that Obama is only in the most superficial sense a Black man or African-American. While his early college days are by no means definitive of the man who would go on to New York and Chicago and Michelle, it's interesting that he then had few friends in the African-American community and culture but was much more the man of the radical feminists, Marxist internationalists, and wealthy foreign students/sugar daddies. In other words, Obama had more in common with many a secular Jew than your average African-American.

Breitbart.tv » The B-Cast Interview: Was Obama a Committed Marxist in College? - Watch more Politics Videos at Vodpod.

Radio Memories: Happy Valentine's Day

Our Radio Memories posts returns this week with a timely story for Valentine's Day.

In the time before television, it was radio, and the dearly departed art form of radio drama, "The Theater Of The Mind", that held the public's affection. For the last year we've tried to pause every Sunday to tune in on old broadcasts from this older time, to reflect on the lessons these old shows may contain, hoping to hear stories with messages that can be of service to us, today.

"[O]ne must experience great sorrow before one can have great happiness"...

This is the theme explored in this week's program, an episode from a dramatic series that could never work as a television show, shaped as it was for fulfillment through the mind's eye of its audience: the historical biography series called Mr President.

The show's introduction was gently re-written each of its 6 seasons, between 1947 and 1953; I think the 1949 season offered the most wonderful description of the series' concept:
"The biography of responsibility".

Each week a little-known episode in the life of an American President would be dramatized, but the actual name of the President would be withheld from the audience until the final act (often the final words of the final act), inviting the audience to guess at the President's identity, in a fun test of the listener's knowledge of history.

We played an episode of the Mr President series last November, and I admit it was pretty easy to figure out the unnamed President in that one; this week's romantic example, also from 1948, will be much, much harder to guess correctly, I assure you..!

I hope it can bring some measure of comfort to those for whom Valentine's Day brings as much pain as it does joy to others around them. We can all use some reassurance that love lost can be found anew, in different form; that no matter how much things change, some things never change, and among these remains the continuing chance for renewed embrace of something bigger than ourselves, the ongoing opportunity to build a relationship, one soul healing another, each finding new reasons to live... and to love.

Previous 2010 Radio Memories posts:

Frontier Fighters: George Pickett
Destination Freedom: Citizen Toussaint [Toussaint L'Ouverture]
Ports Of Call: Haiti

For a list of our 2009 Radio Memories listings, go here.

Olympic Diary Day 1 - A Golden Reverie

I've spent a little time watching Vancouver Olympic fever and I'm sure I will have something to write before long about the morality of this grand festival. But my mind remains unfocussed. So a few impressions... Downtown, the streets are bathed in Canadian red, with the accessory of choice, as pushed by the people and the powers that be, being red mittens with white maple leaves.

So popular is this item that they have even begun to outfit the summer athletes, like Harry Jerome.



Call me queer; but what, with all the national obsession with mittens and "going for gold", I couldn't help but think of Archibald Lampan's classic Canadian poem, In November:

With loitering step and quiet eye,
Beneath the low November sky,
I wandered in the woods, and found
A clearing, where the broken ground
Was scattered with black stumps and briers,
And the old wreck of forest fires.
It was a bleak and sandy spot,
And, all about, the vacant plot,
Was peopled and inhabited
By scores of mulleins long since dead.
A silent and forsaken brood
In that mute opening of the wood,
So shrivelled and so thin they were,
So gray, so haggard, and austere,
Not plants at all they seemed to me,
But rather some spare company
Of hermit folk, who long ago,
Wandering in bodies to and fro,
Had chanced upon this lonely way,
And rested thus, till death one day
Surprised them at their compline prayer,
And left them standing lifeless there.

There was no sound about the wood
Save the wind's secret stir. I stood
Among the mullein-stalks as still
As if myself had grown to be
One of their sombre company,
A body without wish or will
And as I stood, quite suddenly,
Down from a furrow in the sky
The sun shone out a little space
Across that silent sober place,
Over the sand heaps and brown sod,
The mulleins and dead goldenrod,
And passed beyond the thickets gray,
And lit the fallen leaves that lay,
Level and deep within the wood,
A rustling yellow multitude.

And all around me the thin light,
So sere, so melancholy bright,
Fell like the half-reflected gleam
Or shadow of some former dream;
A moment's golden reverie
Poured out on every plant and tree
A semblance of weird joy, or less,
A sort of spectral happiness;
And I, too, standing idly there,
With muffled hands in the chill air,
Felt the warm glow about my feet,
And shuddering betwixt cold and heat,
Drew my thoughts closer, like a cloak,
While something in my blood awoke,
A nameless and unnatural cheer,
A pleasure secret and austere.

Meanwhile, in the quiet neighbourhoods of the city, life as art goes on...

The Olympic flame passes through Burnaby

No insect protection officers stop the event!

Should we call ourselves "conservatives", or those who seek the "authenticity of openness to transcendence", a.k.a. "openness to existence"?

Dag, who has recently taken to reading Eric Voegelin, likes to remind me that Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism, does not mention Voegelin, though the influence is clearly there, because Goldberg's editor told him that if he went on about Voegelin, no one would read the book. Too difficult, the cautious man implied. I think Dag means to counsel me, but maybe also laugh with me, should I ever hope of attracting more readers to the blog.

Anyway, this is a commercial instinct we can't afford to follow. As Thomas Bertonneau notes in his latest Brussels Journal essay on Voegelin, there is a vocabulary developed by Voegelin - in his discussion of modern Gnosticism - that is particularly suited to discussing the political pathologies of our times. This is another rich piece from Professor Bertonneau, but one thing I will point out here is its discussion of Voegelin's caution to his friends not to call him a "conservative", a title he feared for its assertion of some false equivalence with the low religious world view of the "liberals":

The term “liberal,” like the term “change,” lends itself rather more to mendacious abuse than to just employment, especially when adopted as a label by the Left, which likes to hide its havoc-making program of transforming the un-transformable beneath the “L-word’s” ointment-like blandness. That the term “liberal” had long since devolved into something meaningless or misleading struck Voegelin already in the 1960s as a hindrance to transparent discourse.
[...]
When we examine the present scene in the United States, we discover just this conceit in the rhetoric of the sitting Democrat-dominated federal government. Vehement commitment to “progress” (“change we can believe in,” as Obama’s electoral slogan put it) differs hardly at all, perhaps only in a few small degrees, from vehement commitment to “permanent revolution,” quite as Leon Trotsky understood when he revived [Charles] Comte’s coinage in his new Bolshevik context. Voegelin writes: “The radical revolutionary must make the revolution into a permanent condition… for as soon as a plateau of stabilization is permitted, the revolution is over.”

Before continuing with Bertonneau, I'll just point out that another way of saying this may be that what today goes by the name of "liberalism" is not itself a complete or satisfactory religion to the degree it cannot articulate a coherent, transcendent, purpose; rather it is, as Bertonneau say, a vehemently apocalyptic religion that relies on introducing ever-more alien and destructive ideas into Western society as a way of asserting its superiority according to the key doctrine of "tolerance", the supposed guarantor of liberalism's moral superiority. As Bertonneau says, "liberalism" is really an agenda of destruction. But, he argues, this should not give license to those of us opposed to modern "liberalism" to call ourselves conservative, as if there were a neat symmetry between the two:

if those who stand in opposition to the radicals were not adequately described as conservatives, as Voegelin strongly implies is the case, how then would one describe them? Or how, in this connection, is one to describe the current “Red-Blue” division in American politics?

Voegelin’s answer to such questions involves his identification of the radical-revolutionary mentality with Gnosticism, that is, with baroque, reality-denying doctrines, sprung from acute anxiety about existence, that bespeak the cause in the fashion of an unquestionable Koranic pronouncement, deviation from which constitutes a punishable offense. (Think: political correctness.) The opposite of Leftwing doctrinaire-ism, as we might call it, is not, however, some antithetical second doctrinaire-ism, equally baroque and locked in Manichaean agon with the first; it is what, in Voegelin’s discourse of the 1950s and 60s, goes by the name, among variants, of openness to existence. The Montreal lecture, “In Search of the Ground,” later appearing as an essay, offers one of the clearest expressions in Voegelin’s massive authorship of this concept.

An element in existence to which the mature individual maintains his “openness” is the cumulus of historic “differentiations in consciousness,” Voegelin’s term from Order and History. The phrase is not obscure: it refers to the fact that the prevailing knowledge of the world in any given cultural continuum – that of the West, for example – sometimes deepens and becomes richer through an individual insight; a “Leap in Being” can happen, as in Western thought when it jumped from mythic to philosophic ideas of existence.

But, Bertonneau argues, these leaps in being are rare events, historically, and do not justify the "progressive" ideology.

what else, pray tell, is revealed in the assumption, lying at the basis of all radical political action, that a society, which also possesses a nature and is limited in its malleability by that nature, can be changed? This is not to assert that there is no discernible history of social development or that any given society continues to exist only insofar as it refuses to permit any internal alteration whatsoever. People tend, however, to exaggerate the extent of change.

I would argue, for example, that the abolition of slavery in the United States, while it abruptly and positively altered the condition of the ex-slaves, altered the larger society hardly at all, since only a tiny minority had ever owned human chattels; nor later on did the repeal of “Jim Crow” make much of a difference for the larger society even though it altered social conditions somewhat for American blacks in Democrat-dominated regions of the nation where anti-black feeling ran high.

In a slightly different way, Voegelin cites the case of Utah, when it petitioned for admission to the Union. The Union stipulated its condition: Membership in the federal polity or polygamy, one or the other for the Mormons, not both. The larger society would not assimilate change of that sort or the precedent it would set.

The limits of change for any society are much smaller than liberal or radical or Gnostic zeal ever admits. To be reconcilable with the society, such change as occurs must reflect a spontaneous consensus, because coercive change, as I have already argued, is tantamount only to annihilation. In the Eighth Century BC, Hellenic society was happy with the symbolism of the “intra-cosmic gods” and the world they implied; by the Fourth Century AD, Mediterranean humanity, by a long-gestating like-mindedness, found the old “intra-cosmic gods” no longer convincing or meaningful and began to reorient itself, either through Alexandrian Judaism and its offshoots, or through Neo-Platonism, or through Gospel Christianity to the later-emerging transcendent Divinity.

As country custom and as household ritual and as semi-comic superstition, the “intra-cosmic gods” lived on and they survive, attenuated in their potency, even to this day. As the image of divinity, wistfully, they perished, a new image replacing them that offered to its recipients a richer understanding of existence. That image, representing the discovery of a new depth in reality, has stood in place in the West for two thousand years.

It follows that sensible people should behave with extraordinary circumspection where it concerns cavalier, wishful, or resentful programs of “change” because, as Voegelin so poignantly shows in his essays, radical “change” based on passions is definitely not the “progress” that it claims itself to be: It is not the “Leap in Being” but the frightened, dangerous opposite – a lapse into primitive thinking and myth.

Opposition to “change” for the sake of change, and to “change” as goalless indefinite regress, which is what the vaunted “progress” really is, will likely take the name of Conservatism, the very label that Voegelin wanted not to descend on him as the sign of his political identity. Voegelin knew that words, like ideas, have consequences. Under this admonition, a number of cautionary remarks can be made about the word “Conservatism” and what it implies. For one thing, as soon as one posits Conservatism, one has created an inevitable verbal artifact – Conservatism versus Liberalism – that is structurally Manichaean. This should give us pause. Manichaean, dualistic structures are a characteristic Gnostic appurtenance, which philosophers should avoid.

I recall here my earlier argument that the opposition to ideological doctrine cannot be another ideological doctrine, for that would be ideological rivalry without meaning rather than engagement in debate for the sake of truth. It would be other than the dignified quest, as, to use Voegelin’s essay-title, “In Search of the Ground.”

What the organized Right-leaning opposition to the Party of Destruction does is, finally, more important than what it calls itself even though words have meanings and usages signify something. I am encouraged, slightly, by the way in which spontaneous demonstrations of popular ire against overweening big-government schemes – like “bailouts” and socialized medical insurance – have surprised and actually checked the dictatorial bullying of the Obama regime. When an amateur journalist-reporter, FOX News Channel’s Glenn Beck, publicized the curriculum vitae and words of Obama adviser Van Jones, a nutty Marxist-racialist, it led to the first departure-under-outside-pressure of an Obama appointee. It is a sign of the times that actual investigative reporting is now done by someone like Beck, who previously was little other than a radio-comedian whose main shtick consisted in making prank telephone calls to predictably dimwitted people in a recurring feature called “Jeopretardy.”

Far from being offended, currently one of the most offensive words in the political jargon, by the silently mouthed “That is not true” – uttered by Supreme Court Justice Alito when President Obama gratuitously insulted the court during his State of the Union Address – I take heart in it because Obama’s disrespect was rooted in a falsehood and Robert’s quiet but visible contradiction was rooted in truth. There should be a good deal more clear articulation of the fact that the deconstructors of society have doctrines, false doctrines galore, and that we, by contrast, have an interest in truth, to the objectivity of which we remain open.

Cultic doctrines kill freedom; they demand its immolation in the sacrificial flames of their causes. Truth and free will – truth and freedom – by contrast require and nourish one another. We must vigorously remind our friends and neighbors of these facts.

By coincidence, Gil Bailie has just posted a couple of quotations that provide another way of articulating this kind of argument. Under the heading, "More on the real counter culture", Bailie first quotes Philip Rieff:

Here we now see, with startling clarity, how little our established political distinctions between left and right, conservative and radical, revolutionary and reactionary, matter nowadays. Rather, any remaking of political distinctions will have to ask, first, whether there is in fact a discipline of inwardness, a mobilization for fresh renunciations of instinct; or whether there is only the discipline of outwardness, a mobilizing for fresh satisfactions of instinct. Such a distinction will divide contemporary men and movements more accurately; then we shall find fashionable liberals and fascists on the same side, where they really belong.

And then he quotes Hans Urs von Balthasar:

The road to authenticity demands the renunciation of immediacy -- that is, it demands ascesis. No great life can reach maturity without ‘great sacrifice’.

And finally, if you are not yet clear on what is being attacked in this post, and you want a concrete example, take a look at Barry Rubin's latest on the "education" his son is receiving:

The teacher told the fourth grade class in the midst of the greatest snow storm in Washington DC history: "Just because it's snowing doesn't mean that there isn't global warming. All scientists agree that there's global warming."

My son raised his hand and said: "That's impossible. Not all scientists agree."

"Ok," said the teacher, "I meant to say that the majority of scientists agree."

Is there man-made global warming? I have no idea whatsoever, lacking the expertise to make such a judgment. But I do know this isn't the way to teach kids about the scientific method. Rather, it is the way to train them always to yield to peer pressure, that dreaded syndrome supposed to lead young people to drugs, alcohol, and smoking. Or, as summed up comically by the character Yossarian in Catch-22, "Just because everyone thinks that way how could I think anything different?"

Indeed, the teacher didn't have to say anything at all, since no child had claimed the heavy snowfall was proof that there was no global warming. They had already spent around three full sessions pounding home the idea that there wasn't any question that global warming is a huge problem on which trillions of dollars must be spent. Presumably, the class was convinced already.

Rather, the attitude evined is that they must be made to believe in this and even the possibility of any doubt existing had to be squelched. And to ensure this the teacher told a lie, which was only retracted because there was one student there who had the knowledge and courage to question it.

This kind of "everyone agrees" argument is the stuff of indoctrination, not learning. The teacher could have spoken about how data is collected, experiments are made, hypotheses are questioned, and out of that debate--if it goes on long enough and all the facts line up--comes a consensus truth which is itself subject to further testing and constant examination.

But that isn't how most schools teach today. Rather they say--in an approach sounding like the worst "progressive" stereotype of a traditional "America is always right" old school system--This is the truth. Everyone says so. Shut up and believe it.

Indeed, there is nothing "liberal" about modern liberalism; so perhaps we should question those who would take up the mantle of conservatism.

The age of being offended

Via Catfur:

Somehow, I think what follows is also relevant to understanding our offendedness in an age without much of a sacralized social order, i.e. an age of relatively free job, residential, and status markets where people fear no one knows his place, or where ordinary human respect for (un)acknowledged differences is lacking. And so instead of the formal offensiveness of past eras where signs of disrespect of rank and status were clear, along with the penalties for such offenses, we witness a not uncommon unwillingness to live in freedom, and hence a confused, hysterical offendedness, sign of an age that is perhaps clamoring for some way back to some kind of resacralized order (via Diana West):

As Paul Belien writes, in response to the monetary crisis racking Europe, and to Obama's snub of the latest EUtopia leaders' festival:

Messrs. Van Rompuy, Barroso and Zapatero all want to be the first to shake Mr. Obama’s hand and receive the deep bow which the American President is in the habit of making to foreign leaders. Because of the embarrassing intra-European squabble about who should have the honor, Obama has declined the invitation until the Europeans have figured out which of them is the most important.

Obama’s decision has come as an unexpected blow to the European leadership. It has upset them so much that they are considering postponing the summit to the autumn. Meanwhile, they have begun quarreling about who is to blame for the present debacle. The Europeans generally agree that the vainglorious Zapatero is mostly to blame, but others are damaged more. “The Spanish have made a mess of the summit but Van Rompuy and the post-Lisbon EU institutions will carry the can in the long term. The squabbling has damaged the EU in the eyes of the most powerful nation in the world,” a senior EU official said.

Although Obama’s snub hurts Europe’s pride, the euro’s monetary problems are far more serious. They not only affect Europe’s finances and economy, but may also tear down the political EU framework. When the European Commission placed Athens under EU supervision last week, Greece was almost bankrupt. Brussels has forced the Greek government to present a plan to drastically reduce its budget deficit from 13% to 3% by the end of 2012. The plan will cost the Greeks blood, sweat and tears. It includes a freeze on civil service wages and the postponement of the retirement age. Brussels has invoked new EU powers under Article 121 of the Lisbon Treaty, which allow it to reshape the structure of Greece’s pensions, healthcare, labor market and private commerce.

“The envisaged correction of the deficit is feasible but subject to risks,” says EU Commission President Barroso – an understatement. The Commission fears a backlash from the Greek unions, who might organize strikes and bring down the Greek government. Trade unions in other countries are nervous, too. They warn that it is unacceptable that the European Commission intervenes in setting national wages.

The EU’s Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia declared that the Greek targets will be enforced strongly and that, if necessary, even more draconian measures will be taken. “Every time we see or perceive slippages, we will ask for additional measures to correct these slippages. Never before have we established so detailed and tough a system of surveillance,” Almunia said. He has demanded quarterly updates on progress towards reduction targets, as well as a first report on 16 March. “This is the first time,” he said, “we have established such an intense and quasi-permanent system of monitoring.”

In an age of "multiculti" bureaucratic empires, one is ultimately offended by a lack of self-rule, even if one no longer wants the responsibilities and hardships of self-rule and just wishes a safe sinecure and pension be granted from on high, as befits one's offended status. Alas, I fear most will continue to be offended by imperial reality.

As Belien has been writing, we will soon have the chance to learn whether it is possible to bind people politically by first binding them to a common monetary policy. The EU project aims to force further political integration by first making the member nations conform to the demands of a common currency and monetary policy whose pricing of currency/debt serves some nations and regions better than others. But where there is not the common political will, can a common currency and policy detached from national self-rule succeed? There is some reason to doubt it. Anthropologically, the political unit, and not the economic one, comes first: a political binding must be prior to any reasonably peaceful economic distribution; the latter depends for its ethical license on the former. But this is not to forget that maybe the Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. have largely given up on the values of national self-rule and will be dragged, with only a little kicking and screaming, into a new imperial political order by their EU "brothers and sisters". The little ones' acceptance of harsh economic terms will be the sign of their political surrender to Brussels. And that will offend me. Tough!

Muslim terrorists take over Cambridge University, what's next?

The terrorism in academe continues; you can no longer say anything that offends Muslims at UK universities, whether true or not, or else. The totalitarian agenda could not be clearer (original source with more details on Islamic terrorism).

As Gil Bailie notes a propos of the Geert Wilders trial (now postponed for several months, as the court perhaps waits to see if Wilders might not be assasinated first) and free speech:

As René Girard argues, the real struggle in our world is not between violence and peace; it is between violence and truth. All attempts to avoid the former by silencing the latter will end in catastrophe.

I'm trying to decide whether it's worth juxtaposing something I just came across, the reaction to some "Jewish"/Anarchist violence in Russia/Ukraine in 1879:

Grigorrii Goldenberg, the assassin of Governor-General Kropotkin, was not so fortunate. He was transporting back some of the dynamite from Odessa, having learned of its location during another chance meeting with Kibalchich, when he raised the attention of some railroad porters who reported him to the police. They were waiting for him at Elisavetgrad Station down the line. He tried to run but was surrounded. He pulled out his pistol, cocked it and threatened to shoot, but numerous men from a crowd of waiting passengers jumped him and disarmed him. The policemen actually had to rescue him from a beating at the hands of the crowd when someone labeled him a "terrorist." They confiscated from him his suitcase, finding in it a pood (36 pounds) of dynamite.

Now that's how you deal with terrorists. But when it comes to those who terrorize Jews, the world seems to have forgotten. Those who would try to appease the Islamic mob will reap the whirlwind.

Plato and Constitutionalism

Here's an interesting video (HT: Gil Bailie) of Hillsdale College President, Larry Arnn, trying to reclaim America's constitutional heritage in the name of a return to a Platonic conception of the truth. Arnn thinks the mainstream academy's descent into postmodern cultural relativism and deconstruction has meant its abandoning of belief in any absolute truths; and at the same time, at the political level of American society, Arnn sees the camp around Barack Obama at war with the Supreme Court and the American Constitution in an effort to re-write the American Constitution as an "evolving" document, so as to allow for some more "progressive" government, i.e. a yet more centralized authority that will seize and "redistribute" the wealth of American society in the name of some more perfect "equality". My thoughts after the video.


Arnn is no doubt right in attacking the nihilism prevalent in today's academy. But is a return to Platonic conceptions of truth - the kind of truth that is constructed through free debate over the meaning of abstract metaphysical concepts (e.g. the good, the beautiful, the true) - possible after postmodernism has deconstructed such meanings or concepts in order to argue that metaphysical "truths" are merely the projections of social power, of the elitist debate and its will to power?

I think Arnn eventually deconstructs his own argument in his concluding thoughts where he hails the American Constitution - a document that owes as much if not more to the Judeo-Christian revelation as to the Greco-Roman - not so much for some metaphysical or philosophical truth inherent in it - the kind of truth that could be stated as some eternally true principle - but more simply for its recognition of the nature of human (covenantal) freedom and for its setting up of rules by which the various branches of government can interact in order to allow our multi-dimensional human freedom to interact, to discover and rule itself.

Arnn argues in response to a question (at 47.30):

The purpose of a college is not diversity, it's truth.... the words university and diversity don't work together, it's stupid... how do you get to the truth... we believe the Constitution of the US is the greatest instrument of government ever written... progressivism is a terrible and dangerous thing

It's a good polemic, but how could we know it's good (or bad, if you must)? We know it if we've had the considered experience that can make sense of what no amount of abstract spinning of concepts like "unity" and "diversity" to young people alone will allow any youngster to appreciate, the kind of experience that allows us to intuit the fundamental unity from which all human diversity has evolved.

The problem with the postmodern deconstruction of abstract philosophical truths is that the deconstructors must forget what the Platonic philosopher kings must also forget - the originary revelatory experiences by which our intuitions of an ultimate human truth were first grasped. It is true that that originary experience cannot be articulated by any one person as a complete and all-satisfying vision of the truth. The mere fact that he is saying it, and not us, is alone enough, in our eyes, for it to fail the inevitable test of truth, since truth is always tested by the faculties of human resentment (a resentment that stems form the fact that he has a different role in the revelatory event than the rest of us).

But what we should not deny is the shared experience of the event by which we have to choose whether to love or resent the event's leader(s) and what s/he offers us. We may disagree with his/her philsophical account of the event, but we can only do so as we share in some experience of the revelatory event itself. It is a commonplace to point out that the postmodern assertion that there is no truth is itself an assertion of truth. Indeed, we cannot escape from the ultimate truth that human beings cannot but direct themselves towards some conception of the "true" and "good". Even the nihilist cannot be a complete nihilist for he has to defend his nihilism as true. Even the Satanist has to convince himself that the Satanic is a higher truth. Even the Gnostic has to convince himself that he is more "progressive" in the face of inevitable change.

And why is that? Ultimately, no strictly Platonic debate is going to provide a satisfactory answer to today's young people made cynical by any claim on authority. I believe only a (generative) anthropological debate focussed on the nature of our experience of shared events can take us further into understanding why man cannot but attempt to justify himself before some "higher" presence, the presence that centres any shared scene of human consciousness. Yes, we do indeed "construct" our truths, each in his way; but these constructions are not some arbitrary will to power, some conspiracy of the elite or of the mob. They are the unpredictable, uncontrollable outcome of human interaction in specific, very real, events.

And the event cannot be controlled by any powerful will, if it is to be significant to more than the lone fantasist. It is the shared event, its truth in unpredictable shared experience, that is variously represented in never-ending debates over truth and significance. We cannot deny truth because we cannot deny the centrality of the shared event/scene of consciousness, even though the nature of a concrete event is not such as to guarantee the sufficiency of abstract philosophical accounts of the truth. And that, ultimately, is why constitutionalism is something worthy of protection and fertilization: constitutionalism, with its origin in the divine covenant of monotheism, is the means by which we maximize our production and representation of the significant events by which we come, individually and as a whole, to know and to rule ourselves.

There is a truth, a truth much more profound than anyone's will to power, but no single account can exhaust or complete our knowledge of it. The "progressive" might say as much, but in his attacks on the Constitution as a mere tool of elite power he betrays his bad faith, which he hopes to cover up by promising us some new and improved Constitution. He is at heart a conspiracy nut, however "nuanced" his accounting of the conspiracy. Easy for me to say... but how do you know his account of the possibilities of human freedom under some new and improved constitution freed from the present elitist conspiracy is in fact less free than my accounting of covenantal freedom? You will know by your experiences of events, by looking at those who would turn means to the service of "progressive" ends, and by looking at those who say our means are our "ends". You will know by your experience of those who rely largely on scapegoating the present regime in order to assert their own alternative legitimacy, and by looking at those who rely on pointing to their own and everyone's fallibilities as reason for a better division or distribution of authority.

Change is inevitable; but does that give anyone a license to try and control it in the mere name of "democracy", "the people", "we won"? Or does it give license only to a truly constitutional, shared, divided, freedom?

Salim Mansur, helping me test the "clipmarks" firefox add-on

clipped from www.torontosun.com In protecting Muslims from those who offend them, the West ill-serves Islam and those Muslims who seek its reform. Muslims need untrammelled free speech to awaken to the awareness of how totalitarian and comatose is their culture.

I'm waiting on a library copy of Salim Mansur's new book. It will be interesting to see if he can make a convincing case for the possibility of reforming Islam, i.e. showing that it can have a purpose that is compatible with free-thinking, free-speaking, free-associating Muslims in a modern civil society - and still be identifiably Islam, the religion that currently prides itself in prescribing a uniquely correct code of conduct for a "complete way of life".

Covenant Zone Welcomes Israeli athletes to Vancouver

I've just seen the news that last week Israeli flags were defaced in Vancouver:

January 31, 2010

(JTA) -- Two Israeli flags that were part of an Olympic display in Vancouver were removed after being defaced.

The Israeli flags were covered in paint with the words "Free Palestine" written on them, the Vancouver Sun reported Sunday. They were removed last month.

The display on the streets of the city features 450 international flags from 80 countries.

Vancouver is hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics, which begin Feb. 12. Israel is sending three athletes.

I think such cowardly forms of "political" protest, which amount to an attack on an entire nation and all its people and athletes regardless of their politics - as if they have no right to exist - requires a response. So I say to fellow Vancouverites, if you can find an Israeli flag to wear, do so for the next few weeks. Here's what I have; say hi if you see me on the streets:

Geert Who?

The news out of the Geert Wilders show trial today is that the Dutch court is refusing to hear but three of the eighteen witnesses Wilders had wished to call.

What is one to make of this but that it shows an obvious desire on the part of the judges to keep things as quiet and short as possible. Once again we see that the "liberal" elites ruling the West simply cannot both defend their dogmatic positions on multiculturalism and "hate speech" without trying to shut up people who point out some of the deep problems with their ideology. And no problem is greater than the question of whether Islam, as it exists today in Europe, is compatible with European liberal democracy.

Diana West notes that it is not just the Dutch judges who don't want to hear too much about Islam, it is also the global media. One might have thought that when the government of a Western state puts on trial the Parliamentary leader of the party currently highest in the polls, this would be big news to those who supposedly pride themselves in chronicling and commenting on the ways of liberal democracy. Apparently not:

If anyone is puzzled as to why there is so little MSM coverage of this trial that is in the shameful and historic tradition of the trial of Galileo, the reason is unspoken, possibly unconscious media cowardice and embarassment: cowardice driven by the chilling effect of the experience of Kurt Westergaard and other critics of Islam under permanent death threat; and embarassment driven by intense discomfort with frank discussion of the gross incompatibility of basic Islamic beliefs with Western society.

In other words, this code of silence is the code of dhimmitude.

This reminded me of Paul Berman's conclusion to his celebrated 2007 New Republic essay on Tariq Ramadan:

The [Salman] Rushdies of today find themselves under criticism, compared unfavorably in the press with the Islamist philosopher [Tariq Ramadan] who writes prefaces for the collected fatwas of Sheik al-Qaradawi, the theologian of the human bomb. Today the menace to society is declared to be Hirsi Ali and people of similar minds, of whom there are quite a few: John Stuart Mill's Muslim admirers, who are said to be just as fanatical as the fanatics. During the Rushdie affair, courage was saluted. Today it is likened to fascism [by the lefist establishment].

How did this happen? The equanimity on the part of some well-known intellectuals and journalists in the face of Islamist death threats so numerous as to constitute a campaign; the equanimity in regard to stoning women to death; the journalistic inability even to acknowledge that women's rights have been at stake in the debates over Islamism; the inability to recall the problems faced by Muslim women in European hospitals; the inability to acknowledge how large has been the role of a revived anti-Semitism; the striking number of errors of understanding and even of fact that have entered into the journalistic presentations of Tariq Ramadan and his ideas; the refusal to discuss with any frankness the role of Ramadan's family over the years; the accidental endorsement in the Guardian of the great-uncle who finds something admirable in the September 11 attacks--what can possibly account for this string of bumbles, timidities, gaffes, omissions, miscomprehensions, and slanders?

Two developments account for it. The first development is the unimaginable rise of Islamism since the time of the Rushdie fatwa. The second is terrorism.

As for Geert Wilders, he apparently is not amused to be tried by judges who apparently suffer in fear of what they might hear and have to judge. Gates of Vienna reports Wilders' comments:

“This court is apparently not interested in the truth. I cannot conclude anything but that the court does not award me a fair trial,” Geert Wilders said after the court in Amsterdam rejected fifteen of the eighteen witnesses chosen by him.

“I have no respect for this,” Wilders added. He pointed out that in a typical criminal case there are often dozens of witnesses heard. He believes that his case, which he calls a matter of great principle, would also deserve that. Otherwise he cannot prove that he has spoken the truth with the statements that led to his prosecution.

The time is come when we all have to decide whether to shut up or face down our fear of the left-terrorist alliance.

As usual, Walker provides a great roundup of Geert Wilders news.

Betrayed

Guess who just came to Chicago, a figure of world historical importance, and was almost completely ignored by the old-school media?


Barry Rubin points to the cold truth the decadent Gnostic elites don't want to see:

...All this brings us to Lech Walesa, revered leader of Poland’s struggle against both Soviet and Communist tyranny. He has now taken the unprecedented step of going to Illinois to endorse a Republican candidate for governor there. The candidate is a Polish-American but still this is an amazing thing for Walesa to do. It is a signal of how truly upset he is and he is far from being alone.

During his visit, Walesa said:

"The US does not lead morally or politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. That was the hope, that whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today we lost that hope."

Why did Walesa say such a thing? Obviously, there is a general worry throughout many countries about the weakness of the Obama administration. But there’s more:

--Poland had gone out on a limb to accept American defensive missiles, nominally against Iran but really as a sign of U.S. commitment to protect Poland from Russia.

--Not only did the Obama administration change the plan (which is justifiable regarding the anti-Iran defenses argument but not the wider and real strategic purpose) but it did so without consulting the Polish government which was only informed at the last minute.

--The decision was announced on September 17, 2009, which everyone in Central Europe knew was the 60th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, followed by the annexation of eastern Poland to the USSR.

It was a triple slap in the face of Poland and every nation which regained independence from Soviet tyranny.

But that’s not all. Everyone but the Central Europeans seems to have forgotten an open letter sent to Obama last July by 22 top Central European figures, including 7 former prime ministers or presidents, and 9 former foreign or defense ministers begging him not to abandon them. Walesa was one of them.

The letter stated:

“We know from our own historical experience the difference between when the United States stood up for its liberal democratic values and when it did not. Our region suffered when the United States [accepted Soviet domination over it] And it benefited when the United States used its power to fight for principle.”

Six months later there has been no change. The Obama administration didn't even deign to respond to this distinguished group with a reassuring answer.

Not only is the Obama administration failing to stand up for liberal democratic values—and I mean here not just advocating democracy abroad but even more importantly supporting democratic friends and opposing expansionist dictatorships—but arguably it is not even standing up for U.S. interests.

Dykegeld?!

Trust Mark Steyn to write a bloody funny post about a deadly serious matter: the Canadian state's utterly banal destruction of Guy Earle's life in a fit of bending over to the narcissistic self-righteousness of those who have discovered power in claiming victimhood. Follow the link for the jokes, here's the more serious stuff:

...It's interesting to me how all those promoters who claim to be committed to producing "edgy", "transgressive", "provocative" comedy wilt like pansies in the face of one "human rights" complaint. But it's invariably the case that the self-congratulatory left, forever hailing itself for its courage in speaking truth to power, is never there when real courage is needed - even if, like Guy Earle, you're essentially one of their own. This shouldn't be difficult even for the myopic politically correct bores who run most comedy clubs. As I wrote here:

Sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two evils, and, if it’s a choice between offensive gags or massive expansion of state power, no self-respecting citizen should find it difficult working out which is the lesser evil and which is the greater threat.

And yet Mr Earle's professional colleagues do seem to be finding it difficult, if not impossible. Strange that.
[...]
The trial on March 29th will be a disgrace. You don't apologize, you don't donate, you put the system on trial.

That's really the only insight you need: It's about them, not you.

PS Kathy Shaidle says: "Just tell them to **** off." I would guess he doesn't want to have his bank accounts frozen or be rendered unemployable in British Columbia. Also, I don't believe, under BC law, you can appeal to a real court if you don't acknowledge the process in the most minimal way. That's why, as I did, you should show up in Heather MacNaughton's courtroom, guffaw occasionally, and in the scrum on the steps aside denounce her as a statist thug and buffoon. In other words, if you're going to tell them to f**k off, do it to their faces.

Under BC's shitty "human rights" code, Maclean's and I were, as a point of law, guilty. So we dared them to convict. And, like all bullies when someone stands up to them, the gutless pussies wimped out. I understand Guy Earle doesn't have as deep pockets, but he needs a support network that will make the political price too high for Commissar MacNaughton. The freespeechy bloggers fulfilled that function for me. The radical comedy crowd don't seem to be stepping up for Mr Earle. In the end, one Kathy Shaidle is worth a hundred guys who do lame-o Stephen Harper gags.

Once again the public needs to get involved in standing up to this evil, not just telling the BCHRT to f-off by picketing while the Earle "trial" is under way, but also the politicians who so far decline to shut them down. The "perfect" Utopian vision (e.g. "a world without discrimination"), since it can only be implemented through tyranny and thus cannot really ever exist, is necessarily always the enemy of the good. When are we going to learn this lesson, that Mama McNaughton cannot save us from ourselves? Might it one day be imaginable to say, No lesbian has greater friends than those who truly help wean her from mother state?

What does it mean to teach "social justice" and "diversity"? University of British Columbia deepens its project of academic tyranny

Before we turn to today's news in the Vancouver Sun, let us ask ourselves, what could it possibly mean to teach, in the context of a teachers' college, "social justice" and "diversity"? What could it mean to be a professor, at the centre of a room of students, telling them that when they become teachers they too must instill in students a respect for "social justice" and "diversity"?

Is the form of a lecture, or mere seminar leader - i.e. telling people what is just and diverse - consistent with raising people to be just and diverse in their habits? Or does our submission to the lecturer's authority mitigate against our acquiring the appropriate habits? And what happens when the lecturer/class leader is aware of such a possibility and avows, in response, that she will do all she can to insure she only speaks in the name of empowering those who are somehow oppressed by our inherited norms and habits, as they pertain to teaching?

I think first asking such questions will help us divine what we are being told by this news report:

Social justice and diversity issues would get unprecedented attention in every course offered by the University of B.C.’s education faculty if a major program overhaul that began several years ago is approved.

“It’s safe to say that every aspect of our program is going to be changed,” associate education dean Rita Irwin said in an interview. “We want to be as responsive as possible to what’s happening in schools. Right now, we’re doing our best to do that, but we think there’s a need to reconfigure.”

It won’t simply be a matter of the university following the lead of B.C. high schools and offering an optional course similar to Social Justice 12. Rather, social justice and diversity are expected to become dominant themes in all education courses, Irwin said.

“If only one class deals with it, then teacher candidates can kind of set it aside. What we’re trying to say now is that you can’t set it aside. You have to understand that it infuses everything you’re doing.”

You have to understand... that I have authority because I speak for those you would forget, if you could...

For example, she said students taking a mathematics course might also end up discussing class, gender or race.

But what could this mean? That in trying to learn the intricacies of algebra, students will be distracted and lectured on the problematic nature of a discipline in which boys have historically done better than girls? in which Asian students tend to better than others? that algebra is somehow testament to the brilliance of Islam or the Arabs in learning how to link together the disparate bits and pieces of their own culture? But how could any such questions be negotiated while actually learning algebra? And perhaps more important, how can any classroom difference be negotiated by ordinary students supposedly interested in "justice" and "diversity", if they have to defer to a central authority? and is a deferral to central authority not inevitable when we define the problem as a greatly scandalous one of "class, gender, or race", when it's no longer a matter of inter-personal differences but an invidious difference of world historical signficance?

Irwin stressed that the redesign has not yet been approved by the university senate. “We’re pretty confident it will go through, but theoretically, it’s not quite through yet,” she said, adding she doesn’t expect changes will take effect before 2012.

The proposals are so far-reaching that Irwin described the process as the “re-imagining” of the UBC education degree. Part of that includes an expectation that education graduates would be “teacher inquirers” with an understanding of a wide range of education issues. As an example, Irwin said they would comprehend the arguments for and against the categorization of special-needs students.

“We want them not to think of teaching in a technocratic, instrumental way but ... [as something] that’s constantly evolving. They need to be attentive to the society around them, they need to be lifelong, life-wide learners, they have to take into consideration what new research in education is saying.

“We really want them to be questioners [and] people who are going to be engaged.”

And what if our questioning leads us to a realization that teaching "social justice" and "diversity" is the epitome of technocratic instrumentalism and as such the great enemy of individual questioning? What if those in authority who are telling us to question authority do so because this is a devious way of asserting their lingering authority in an age that likes to think it has learned the lessons of how dictatorships work. I mean, "Class! Can you tell me of one twentieth-century dictatorship anywhere in the world that didn't justify its authority in the name of saving the people from their oppressors, be these Jews, Freemasons, kulaks, bourgeois, the educated, the technocratic, Americans, white colonialists, etc. etc.? Does a dictatorship ever exercise power in the name of personal responsibility, unless it is pointing to a failure of someone's personal responsibility because said person is allegedly serving the cause of some oppressive group?

And even when you are aware that so much authority justifies itself by declaring the previous holders of authority to have been just so reliant on scapegoating and oppressing, can you yourself escape the cycle of scapegoating and oppressing if you propose to teach "social justice" and "diversity" instead of, say, individual responsibility in the context of maximally free political and economic markets?

The faculty also hopes to encourage specific areas of interest, such as UBC’s social-emotional learning experiment that began this year as the first in North America and possibly the world, Irwin said. (Social and emotional learning is a process for helping students develop the knowledge, understandings and skills that support learning, positive behaviour, and constructive social relationships.)

Nope, no one can accuse them of promoting technocratic authority...

Speaking for myself, I think we would have a lot more justice, and genuine diversity in our society if we made teaching a profession that anyone could enter on their own merits, regardless of whether they had passed through perhaps the most PC institution in our society and perhaps the universities' least intellectually serious faculty - the teachers' colleges. I think we would have a lot more justice and diversity if instead of worshiping professors we respected, in our own individual and barely public ways, people like Laura Wood, The Thinking Housewife.

In the linked article, Wood argues that schools are becoming dominated by feminine values that, on the one hand, marginalize boys and their needs, and on the other set up girls to expect the world but in a way that is to insure at some point in the future a great personal fall and disappointment when the girls learn the world is not what they have been led to believe, that they cannot have everything.

Class! Can there be any doubt that what the University of B.C.'s education faculty proposes is to further assert feminine classroom authority, an unquestionable maternal authority, in the name of "social justice" and "diversity"? Again, I ask you how can these values be asserted without asserting a centralized authority without which all that we are taught to be totally scandalous - the invidious distinctions we ascribe to "class, race, and gender" - cannot be mediated. I mean, once we believe "social justice" and "diversity" MUST be a part of everything we do, are we left to do anything without deferring to whomever has the power to make the necessarily arbitrary dictates on what is and isn't a scandal to "equality" and "justice" in the "diverse" classroom? Can individual students who don't aspire to serve in the ranks of a victim-naming priesthood really be empowered by such a curriculum? How can I discuss my difference with you if what divides us is all the hidden power of the "class, race, gender" system? Must I not defer to the authoritative diagnosis of the alleged evils before we can start to talk? and would not such a deferral mean we won't really talk, but rather you will lecture me on my "privilege" and I must either go along with that or get out?

Can real differences and diversity emerge under such a regime, or can we only ritualize and freeze in place some set of authoritative social distinctions that only slowly changes according to the politics in the backrooms of the teachers' colleges? Does "social justice" and "diversity" mean anything other than that we must become more, not less, dependent on the University of British Columbia Faculty of Education?

I think those who truly wish students to be able to make a difference have to focus on the individual person. But alas, that is an idea firmly rooted in Western, Judeo-Christian traditions. And that is the great scandal of our times...

In the meantime, practical students will be pressured more and more to ask only "what are the hoops we have to jump through" to please the technocratic authority that disguises itself in the names of "social justice" and "diversity" and anti-technocratic authority? And the real teachers and good people who make their way in the world despite all the evils of academic officialdom will be stuck with the task of asking how to turn the "what are the hoops?" question into a genuine moment for learning.