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Thread: WZ's Corner

  1. #71

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...cb526470260601

    There was a time when journalists backed free speech


    • CHRIS UHLMANN
    • The Australian
    • 12:00AM February 20, 2016



    Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

    Repressive Tolerance (1965) — Herbert Marcuse
    It was a liberating experience. In a morning moment of madness I had decided to tweet into the maelstrom of media rage created by former prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to fly to the US to address the Alliance Defending Freedom.

    It had been prompted by an interview where an American tolerance commissar opined it was appalling, in a democracy, that people opposed to abortion and gay marriage were allowed to air their toxic views.

    This progressive truth was so self-evident it went unremarked by the interviewer.

    My clear intent was neither to defend Abbott’s world view nor his decision to speak to a cabal of “reactionary” Christians on the hand-grenade topic “the importance of the family”. It was simply to say: “Once upon a time journalists believed in free speech …”

    It seemed an unremarkable intervention. It wasn’t surprising that there was a social media storm in the Twitter teacup because its obsessives are always stewing over something. But that defending free speech could be cast as a crime against tolerance screams something very disturbing about our times.
    That some who lit torches with the mob were journalists says a lot about the state of the media. These reporters have appointed themselves the prefects of progressive verities.

    That is disturbing because when journalists parade as pointers to moral true north then check your bearings, we have drifted badly off course. Yet I had naively hoped that free speech was one of the few things on which journalists in a democracy could agree: neutral ground in the culture wars. I had long feared this was not the case and so it proved.

    And that was liberating: a Damascene moment of self-discovery. I had become a radical by standing still. For in an age where being a revolutionary is traditional, then being traditional is revolutionary.
    There was another insight. We had reached a historic inflection point. Nearly 90 years after Antonio Gramsci began writing his letters from Benito Mussolini’s prison, Marxism’s long march through Western institutions was reaching its end.

    From his cell Gramsci wrestled with why workers in the West weren’t rising up to cast out the ruling class, as Marx predicted they would.

    Gramsci pitied them because, he deduced, they were victims of false consciousness.
    They had been brainwashed by a vast array of religious, intellectual and cultural institutions into believing their interests and the state’s coalesced.

    “The state is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules,” he wrote.

    It seems never to have occurred to Gramsci that the workers recognised Marxism for what it was: a prescription for a tyranny so profound it sought to colonise people’s minds.

    But if the people wouldn’t buy a bad idea, there was one eager market: Europe’s intellectuals. Gramsci proposed they begin a grinding “war of position” to take the commanding heights of the bureaucracy, universities and the media. Once there they would scrub the landscape clean of Western values.
    “Cultural policy will above all be negative, a critique of the past; it will be aimed at erasing from the memory and at destroying,” he wrote.

    As social projects go, this wasteland was a tough sell, but neo-Marxists are nothing if not dogged. They built critical theory as a vehicle for change and began the deconstruction of the West.

    Frankfurt School academics fleeing Adolf Hitler’s Germany transmitted the intellectual virus to the US and set about systematically destroying the culture of the society that gave them sanctuary.
    America’s freedom of speech was its achilles heel. Critical theorists were given university pulpits and a constitutionally ordained right to preach, grinding its foundation stones to dust. Since 1933 they have been hellbent on destroying the village to save it.

    When Herbert Marcuse wrote Repressive Tolerance 50 years ago, the hope that his ideas would become mainstream was a distant dream. But, if they did, he had developed a plan for reversing the polarity of freedom.

    Marcuse cautioned his disciples not to be so foolish as to afford the courtesy of free speech to their opponents.

    “Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, certain behaviour cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude,” he wrote.

    Tolerance is the totem of our age, a bumper sticker of virtue. Yet hidden in its many meanings is the doublespeak of defining what will be taboo. It is now considered tolerant to demand silence from nonconformists.

    When the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commission says the Catholic Church has a case to answer for robustly defending its views on marriage and the family, then we have seen a glimpse of the Marcusian future. And it is just one gust of the gale buffeting a society hollowed out by its intellectuals.

    I hoped to remain indifferent to the inevitable change in marriage laws. But that will be impossible if those who cast themselves as oppressed seek to become oppres*sors. If offending the new ruling hegemony is prohibited then I stand with the right of the minority to disagree.

    Stripped of their fashionable clothes, what’s striking about the tolerance police is how similar these new moralists are to the old. They pursue heretics with an inquisitor’s zeal, blinded by the righteousness of their cause.

    In A Man for All Seasons Thomas More’s son-in-law William Roper declared he would knock down every law in England to get at the devil.

    “Oh?” More says “And when the last law was down and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat … I’d give the Devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety’s sake.”

    Chris Uhlmann is the ABC’s political editor.
    Last edited by camouflage762; 10-07-2017 at 07:33. Reason: Paragraphs
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  2. #72

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opi...service=mobile

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  3. #73

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    http://www.unz.com/article/unite-the...-got-it-right/

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  4. #74

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  5. #75

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    I've been accused of using this locked thread to propagate my "distorted views". By someone who obviously didn't read the the first post in the thread but nonetheless in light of that, here's one more:

    "Many people care about our country, wishing us well, but fear we are in the process of blowing it. Of course, some former South Africans left because they did not like the prospects for the future. Without wishing us harm, they have a vested interest in a deteriorating South Africa; it affirms that they were right to leave when they did."

    http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion...t-south-africa

    Pretty succinctly put.
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  6. #76

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    A tweet by HM Treasury: “Here’s today’s surprising #FridayFact. Millions of you have helped end the slave trade through your taxes. Did you know? In 1833, Britain used £20 million, 40% of its national budget, to buy freedom for all slaves in the Empire. The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015. Which means that living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  7. #77

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    In a desolate informal settlement near the town of Gansbaai, divers with no historical connection to the fishing industry have taken to swimming nearly two miles out to Dyer Island, a global hot spot for shark cage diving, to hunt in comparatively untouched abalone beds.

    Last September, one diver, Sivuyile Xelela, was dragged to his death by a great white shark in front of other poachers.

    https://nyti.ms/2GmQuVK

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  8. #78

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    Pope Francis' homily...

    *You can have flaws, be anxious, and ever angry, but do not forget that your life is the greatest enterprise in the world. Only you can stop it from going bust. Many appreciate you, admire you and love you.

    Remember that to be happy is not to have a sky without a storm, a road without accidents, work without fatigue, relationships without disappointments.

    To be happy is to find strength in forgiveness, hope in battles, security in the stage of fear, love in discord. It is not only to enjoy the smile, but also to reflect on the sadness.It is not only to celebrate the successes, but to learn lessons from the failures.It is not only to feel happy with the applause, but to be happy in anonymity.

    Being happy is not a fatality of destiny, but an achievement for those who can travel within themselves. To be happy is to stop feeling like a victim and become your destiny's author. It is to cross deserts, yet to be able to find an oasis in the depths of our soul. It is to thank God for every morning, for the miracle of life.

    Being happy is not being afraid of your own feelings. It's to be able to talk about you. It is having the courage to hear a "no". It is confidence in the face of criticism, even when unjustified. It is to kiss your children, pamper your parents, to live poetic moments with friends, even when they hurt us. To be happy is to let live the creature that lives in each of us, free, joyful and simple. It is to have maturity to be able to say: "I made mistakes". It is to have the courage to say "I am sorry". It is to have the sensitivity to say, "I need you". It is to have the ability to say "I love you".

    May your life become a garden of opportunities for happiness ... That in spring may it be a lover of joy. In winter a lover of wisdom. And when you make a mistake, start all over again. For only then will you be in love with life. You will find that to be happy is not to have a perfect life. But use the tears to irrigate tolerance. Use your losses to train patience. Use your mistakes to sculpter serenity. Use pain to plaster pleasure. Use obstacles to open windows of intelligence.

    Never give up .... Never give up on people who love you. Never give up on happiness, for life is an incredible show."

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  9. #79

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    Just in case you think anti-semitism is rooted primarily in fascist thinking.

    The shame of antisemitism on the left has a long, malign history

    https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...malign-history

    Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

  10. #80

    Default Re: WZ's Corner

    Sweden Prepares for War.

    For the first time since 1943, Sweden has started preparing its population for war. The brochure linked below is being distributed to all 4,800,000 households in Sweden. The brochure on the link below is the English-language version.

    You go figure out for yourself what the significance of this may or may not be…

    https://www.dinsakerhet.se/siteasset...--engelska.pdf
    Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit: occidentis telum est.

    Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)

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