Potpourri
==> At IER I make a provocative claim: Economists have been “useful idiots” for the environmental socialists.
==> This is a really neat Forbes article from 2 years ago, that the mysterious Von Pepe sent me. An excerpt:
Stating the equation a little differently illustrates the principle a little differently: ‘Assets = liability + capital’, which is to say that everything a company owns represents either an obligation to a creditor or back to the owner.
If this sounds theological to you, that’s not your imagination. Much of the Bible is written with the steward/owner mindset in the center. Israel was seen as the steward of God’s land, of His law, even of His name.
Jesus’ parables quite often center around the relationship between steward and owner. Paul’s letters repeatedly invoke the idea of stewards who hold assets in trust. “… It is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2 KJV). Quite a bit of the Pauline epistles are taken up with matters of accounting: Alms to be collected, accounted for, and distributed from the church of one city to the church of another city. This was something quite rare in the ancient pagan world and required new forms of financial accountability. Creating a mutual aid and welfare society on a network basis, rather than one like Rome’s top-down welfare state, was a financial innovation of incredible importance.
Now I’m going to shock you right back: I don’t actually object to anything you said in your IER useful idiots link.
I was really surprised to see the Guardian column: “We don’t have to wait for economic theory to catch up.” = “lol it was great when you were advocating for carbon-restriction policies but now that you’re disagreeing with us, goodbye”.
thanks Silas.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/portland-state-rejects-conservative-political-thought-course-because-its-not-inclusive/
Yet another example of where “diversity and inclusion” have become tools to exclude anyone who disagrees with the modern cultural Marxist framework. By careful selective enforcement and interpretation of “diversity” to mean absolutely no conservative Christian viewpoints the tertiary institutions can maintain maximum groupthink.
“Asked to explain how the course would reflect his students’ various learning styles, Gilley said he would not assume their styles by their “skin pigmentation” but evaluate them as individuals as the course proceeded.”
Learning styles surely has nothing to do with skin pigmentation, but everyone knows that. To say he would reflect different learning styles by “evaluating as individuals as the course proceeded” is not answering the question. How will you do this? Will you use different media and presentation styles? Offer different forms of assessment? Case studies?
If he really answered that question that way I am not at all surprised he got turned down. It seems he is determined to view every aspect through the lens of race, even while denying he is doing this.
It is as if, being asked “how will you organise transport for field trips?” he answered “I will not segregate the students by color. Black students will be allowed to sit anywhere on the bus”
I’ve always thought much the same … but these days it’s highly dangerous to presume “everyone knows that”.
https://www.pathwaysrtc.pdx.edu/pdf/pbCulturalCompetenceInSchoolPsychology.pdf
Of course, there’s a constant refrain from the media telling us that culture, religion, race and ethnicity are all the same thing, and only they get to decide which applies in any situation. For example, if you disagree with some aspect of Islam, that must be because you hate brown people. If you agree with some aspect of Christianity you might be a white supremacist (whatever that means). It doesn’t matter that both Christians and Muslims come in all possible colours … that’s irrelevant.
So what they are doing is saying that culture controls “learning styles” (whatever they are) and when convenient we swap culture out for race (nudge nudge wink wink).
Personally … I think this has all gone off the deep end into fruitloop land, but that’s just me. The quickest and easiest analysis would be to determine who gains power in this situation. Oh look … it happens to be the people who can exclude others from getting access to the resources of the college by erecting a wall of gobbledygook around themselves and demand everyone complies with a complex and vague set of requirements that I’m sure are evaluated highly subjectively. How surprising, but how convenient!
My guess is that Gilley understands this game quite well, expected to be kicked out because anyone with a conservative view of history generally gets kicked out, but felt like calling them out on their supposed diversity and inclusive policies which are anything but.
“Personally … I think this has all gone off the deep end into fruitloop land, but that’s just me.”
Perhaps that is because you apparently don’y know what a white supremacist is.
“My guess is that Gilley understands this game quite well, expected to be kicked out because anyone with a conservative view of history generally gets kicked out, ”
You are saying that he deliberately answered the questions in such a way that he would be turned down, so he could make a fuss about it? It sounds very much like the gay wedding cake type incidents.
“For example, if you disagree with some aspect of Islam, that must be because you hate brown people. If you agree with some aspect of Christianity you might be a white supremacist ”
This is obvious nonsense. The Pope and Archbishop Sentamu agree with quite a lot of Christian aspects and disagree with quite a lot of aspects of Islam, but they are not generally considered to be white supremacists or to hate brown people.
I’m reasonably confident that no possible wording on that form would have led to Gilley being accepted for the job, and all the key parties are aware of this. It’s about power, and Gilley simply isn’t teaching the approved narrative.
Under such circumstances, the correct approach is to find ways to get the other guy’s mask to slip and reveal the use of power. The procedure of filling in forms creates a facade to show that some process is happening, so we look for the way to see behind that facade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u88EIoUkKQ0
That one explains the whole “White Supremacist” schtick pretty well I think.
Er, I think it is pretty well understood that attitudes common in the 1940’s are no longer acceptable. The black soldier depicted may well have felt a lot of progress had been made. “You mean I can stand in the same line as white folks? Maybe even play major League Baseball? Get the same wages and do the same jobs as whites? Maybe marry a white woman without getting lynched? Things are so much better in this time!”
There were no women soldiers, but they would notice a few differences too. They might observe that they could now serve on a jury, obtain credit, attend elite colleges, not get fired for getting pregnant, practice law in all the States, refuse sex with their husband among other things.
So it is a pretty odd joke. If we retained 1940’s attitudes we would find lots of stuff odd, but thankfully most of us have moved on. It is those that wish to cling on to the outdated racism, bigotry and misogyny that was rife in 1944 who presumably relate to that cartoon and think it has explaining power.
Is the term “nazi” overused? yeah, sure. I very often see the term “feminazi” used very casually, for example.