May 10, 2015

The Red Guards Were Never So Respectable

The response to the Garland shooting has been...dismaying

That response is tied to something that I've blogged about in association with matters of far less importance before, I've been working on another post on the topic for months but its so damned depressing to me that it still festers in draft form. Fortunately, Ace has nailed it: You really should read the whole thing, but here is a particularly important excerpt:

This is about, specifically, the careerist, cowardly, go-along-to-get-along mores of the Upper Middle Class, the class of people whose parents were all college educated, and of course are college educated themselves; the class that dominates our thought-transmitting institutions (because non-college educated people are more of less shut out of this industry).

It is a class which is deathly afraid of social stigma, and lives in class-based fear being grouped with the wrong people, and which is more interested in Career, quite frankly, than in the actual tradecraft of that Career, which is clarity of thought and clarity of expression.


That is the bit that is getting quoted everywhere and I DO think it is making an exceedingly important point about the larger issue facing society. 
The idea of a 'problem class' is on the face of it is pretty obnoxious. However, the upper middle class is an important barometer of a societies' health. This is the group that in other times were often minor nobility and they produce the bulk of a nation's great thinkers and innovators when a society is healthy. 
When societies are not though, this demographic also produces about 100% of the Robspierres, Ches, Maos and disappointed Austrian painters. The herd dynamics ACE is referring to are at the core of a whole host of societal ills right now, the most troubling being the inability of so many people to stand up for anything like classically liberal principals....which is where ACE gets down to brass tacks..

One does not "support" someone's right to free speech by name-calling them and advertising how far one believes they fall outside the smug Upper Middle Class (leftist-dominated) Consensus.

One supports free speech by supporting those who speak freely.

I am so disgusted by how so many alleged thinkers seem to care more about social positioning than actual thought.

I should not advertise any hostility I may have towards Ms. Gellar to prove I'm "among the acceptable ones."

What he said...


The winning submission to the contest was by Bosch Fawstin

 I have little to add except for this....One of the more worrisome arguments I've heard concerning political correctness recently is the idea that "...as long as the GOVERNMENT isn't shutting people up, then it isn't censorship...So kindly shut up" That argument may be technically true and indeed government enforcement of such things is a bigger evil. Its also pretty hard to pass constitutional muster in this country which is why we have these examples of things that are not technically censorship.

The Hayes Code

The Comics Code Authority

The Hollywood Blacklist

Homeowners Associations

I guess those are all non-objectionable then. 


Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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