Secular Right

The Pope’s “Distorted Vision”

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Andrew Stuttaford

I don’t know whether his views on this matter are driven by authoritarianism (Peronism dies hard), a theocratic contempt for national borders or simple bone-headedness, but, in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica Pope Francis has now come out in favor of a federal Europe, well, soonish.

l’Europa deve assumere al più presto una struttura federale.

In the same interview, the Pope had this to say (translation via AFP):

“I worry about very dangerous alliances between powers which have a distorted vision of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Putin and Assad over the war in Syria…”

So Pope Francis thinks that America has a “distorted vision of the world”? Say what you will, the man has chutzpah.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa may be turning into something of a disappointment to the Pope. Lampedusa, which is just off the North African coast, has become a landing point for many of the migrants headed Europe’s way and, for others, tragically, a last resting place, something that prompted Francis to choose the island as the site of his first official visit outside Rome after becoming pope in 2013.

While he was there he gave a talk on the topic of immigration that displayed both the demagogic skills and profound intellectual dishonesty that have become a recurring theme of his papacy. I’ve blogged about that talk a few times. Theodore Dalrymple filleted it here. This extract gives a flavor:

By elevating feeling over thought, by making compassion the measure of all things, the Pope was able to evade the complexities of the situation, in effect indulging in one of the characteristic vices of our time, moral exhibitionism, which is the espousal of generous sentiment without the pain of having to think of the costs to other people of the implied (but unstated) morally-appropriate policy…..

The Pope’s use of a term such as ‘those who take the socio-economic decisions in anonymity’ was strong on connotation but weak on denotation, itself a sign of intellectual evasion. Who, exactly, were ‘those’ people? Wall Street hedge fund managers, the International Monetary Fund, opponents of free trade, African dictators? Was he saying that the whole world economic system was to blame for the migration across the Mediterranean, that the existence of borders was illegitimate, that Denmark (for example) was rich because Swaziland was poor, that if only Lesotho were brought up to the level of Liechtenstein (or, of course, if Liechtenstein were brought down to the level of Lesotho) no one would drown in the Mediterranean? There was something for everyone’s conspiracy theory in his words….

Note also a few of the facts and figures that Dalrymple cites:

Lampedusa is an Italian island of 8 square miles with a permanent population of 6000, which so far this year has received 7800 migrants trying to reach Europe across the Mediterranean from sub-Saharan and North Africa, that is to say more than 1000 a month. When the Pope officiated at mass on the island’s sports field, there were 10,000 in the congregation, two thirds more than the permanent population…

Now fast forward to 2017, and this report in the Guardian:

Anyone looking for an insight into the growing disillusionment of ordinary Italians as their country is left to deal alone with a summer surge of migrants on its southern shores should contemplate the fate of Giusi Nicolini, the former mayor of Lampedusa.

Earlier this year Nicolini won Unesco’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny peace prize for the “great humanity and constant commitment” with which she has managed a migration crisis that began in earnest during the summer of 2011, as the Arab spring turned north African societies upside down.

A politician from the centre-left Democratic party, Nicolini also won the Olof Palme prize in 2016 and was among the Italians celebrated at a dinner with former US president Barack Obama at the White House in October.

But as she travelled the world and courted the media, regularly appearing on Italian TV and portraying the tiny island of around 6,000 people as a safe haven for migrants, discontent simmered back on Lampedusa, closer to Tunisia than mainland Italy, where she held office. Islanders made their feelings known last month when Nicolini was resoundingly ousted from her post, coming third in municipal elections with just 908 votes.

“It wasn’t a surprise to us that she lost,” said Salvatore Martello, a hotel owner and fisherman who won the election running independently from Italy’s main parties. “In the years she was mayor, she curated an image abroad of the island and the migrant situation, forgetting its people.”

…“People didn’t like Nicolini because she put herself first,” said Vincenzo Esposito, a fisherman for 50 years. “Yes, it was right to help migrants, but millions have been spent on that and not on our basic needs….”

“Moral exhibitionism”, that was the term that Dalrymple used. Works well, I think.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Immigration, Pope Francis, Religious Left | Comments Off

Bret Weinstein talks about being hunted on campus

Posted on July 1, 2017 by David Hume

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bret Weintsein | Comments Off

Facing Death for Blasphemy

Posted on June 14, 2017 by Andrew Stuttaford

Technology may progress, but there is no right side of history, no rule than man is going to progress:

New York Times:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An antiterrorism court in Pakistan has sentenced a Shiite man to death for committing blasphemy in posts on social media. The man, Taimoor Raza, 30, was found guilty of making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad, his wives and others on Facebook and WhatsApp.

Mr. Raza was sentenced to death on Saturday by Judge Bashir Ahmed in Punjab Province. It was the first time anyone has been given the death penalty for blasphemy on social media in Pakistan. Mr. Raza can appeal the sentence…

Mr. Raza was initially charged under a section of the penal code that punishes derogatory remarks about other religious personalities for up to two years. Later, during the course of the investigations, he was charged under a law that focuses specifically on derogatory acts against the Prophet Muhammad, which carries a death penalty.

Mr. Raza’s sentence comes amid a widening crackdown against blasphemous content on social media, especially Facebook and Twitter. This year, the country’s interior minister asked Facebook to identify people suspected of committing blasphemy so that they could be prosecuted.

Critics say the government’s move has spread fear and intimidation, leading to vigilante justice and violence.

In April, a university student in northern Pakistan was tortured and shot to death by fellow students. The student, Mashal Khan, who attended Abdul Wali Khan University, was accused of posting blasphemous content on Facebook…

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blasphemy and defamation of religion, Islam, Islamism, Pakistan | Comments Off

Saving intellectuals from the red guards; it’s a mitzvah

Posted on June 2, 2017 by David Hume

The Left is cannibalizing its own again. Unless you’re under a rock you have probably heard about what’s happened to Bret Weinstein. The Campus Mob Came for Me—and You, Professor, Could Be Next:

I was not expecting to hold my biology class in a public park last week. But then the chief of our college police department told me she could not protect me on campus. Protestors were searching cars for an unspecified individual—likely me—and her officers had been told to stand down, against her judgment, by the college president.

Racially charged, anarchic protests have engulfed Evergreen State College, a small, public liberal-arts institution where I have taught since 2003. In a widely disseminated video of the first recent protest on May 23, an angry mob of about 50 students disrupted my class, called me a racist, and demanded that I resign. My “racist” offense? I had challenged coercive segregation by race. Specifically, I had objected to a planned “Day of Absence” in which white people were asked to leave campus on April 12.

I am not too concerned about the details of what is happening in Olympia. Bret Weinstein is evincing surprise at the insanity of it all, but then he is a self-described progressive who assumes that the the Left is reasonable, and in some way on the “right side of history.” Weinstein is making reasoned arguments, and appealing to facts and evidence, and a general spirit of liberality. This is a recipe for failure.

None of the above has much sway with the loudest and most assertive elements of the campus activist Left. Mind you, these are not most students on campus, and these are not even most liberal and Left students. But they are loud, and they are frightening.

As expected there is a huge furor on right-leaning Twitter and right-wing publications about what is happening to Weinstein. In general the other side of the political spectrum has been muted in its response. Jerry Coyne has spoken up, but that is to be expected. Coyne has a paleoliberal sensibility out of step with the new order. The New York Times has finally weighed in with some broad liberal platitudes in regards to freedom of speech. Weinstein has been vocal about the fact that none of his colleagues have come to his defense.

But one tendency, including among some academics, is to wonder as to the support Bret Weinstein is getting. In particular, the right-wing is agitating against the students. And Weinstein’s brother, who has been vocal in his defense, is affiliated with Thiel Capital. As one scientist on Twitter said, that’s not a “good look.”

From the perspective of the person being attacked and character assassinated this must seem strange and rather shocking. When you are under attack you take the allies you can get. When people want you fired, and would be happy to drive your family into destitution, you take the help and support you can get. This is human nature. Instead of focusing on the injustice Weinstein claims he is suffering, his erstwhile allies on the political Left seem more worried about the people who are coming to Weinstein’s aid.

What if Bret Weinstein told the right-wing publications and Twitter accounts to stop defending him. Would the currently silent liberals and Leftists spring to take their spots? I doubt it. Basically what they are proposing is that Weinstein stand down with no defenses and if he does not, if he can not, he earns their contempt.

This is an opportunity for conservatism. Weinstein may not identify as a conservative today, but he will remember who showed him charity, who gave him a fair hearing, who came to his defense. Conservatism may gain more traction among intellectuals dealing with nihilist Left activists if it exhibits humanity and compassion, stances which are sometimes lacking in the swarming denunciations of the social justice contingent.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bret Weinstein | 5 Comments

Anti-SJW Sentiment in China

Posted on May 14, 2017 by mupetblast

I say anti-SJW, though it could just as easily apply to plain ol’ regular cosmopolitan globalists, I suppose. Here’s an interesting article at openDemocracy on the use of “white left” in China as a racial-cum-political epithet:

If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immigration on a Chinese social media platform these days, it’s impossible to avoid encountering the term baizuo, or literally, the ‘white left.’

Apart from some anti-hegemonic sentiments, the connotations of ‘white left’ in the Chinese context clearly resemble terms such as ‘regressive liberals’ [*] or ‘libtards’ in the United States. In a way the demonization of the ‘white left’ in Chinese social media may also reflect the resurgence of right-wing populism globally. The term first became influential amidst the European refugee crisis, and Angela Merkel was the first western politician to be labelled as a baizuo for her open-door refugee policy.

Read the whole thing. The author notes the lack of “experiential motivation” for this attitude, and how it even extends into a very American thrashing of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (but not Donald Trump).

*The link here is to an article at HuffPo claiming “regressive liberal” is an Islamophobic term. So am I to understand that a claim that one is insufficiently liberal is something conservatives do? Yes, actually I am. Once you understand that much of what passes for conservatism these days is simply yesterday’s liberalism (or today’s liberalism, albeit an embattled one), it begins to make sense. That makes someone like Dave Rubin operationally conservative even if they’d resist that label.

Posted in culture, Odds & Ends, Race | Tagged China, internet, SJW | Comments Off

Henry Wallace couldn’t get them all right

Posted on May 13, 2017 by David Hume

American Fascism, in 1944 and Today:

Seventy-three years ago, The New York Times asked the sitting vice president to write an article about whether there are fascists in America, and what they’re up to.

It was an alarming question. And the vice president took it quite seriously. His article, “The Danger of American Fascism,” described a breed of super-nationalist who pursues political power by deceiving Americans and playing to their fears, but is really interested only in protecting his own wealth and privilege.

That vice president was my grandfather, Henry A. Wallace. And in my view, he predicted President Trump.

If you know American history you know that Wallace was famous for something else besies his anti-Fascism. But all in good time. From the original Wallace piece:

The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture and race astride the world. In every big nation of the world are at least a few people who have the fascist temperament. Every Jew-baiter, every Catholic hater, is a fascist at heart. The hoodlums who have been desecrating churches, cathedrals and synagogues in some of our larger cities are ripe material for fascist leadership.

The reality is that the Prussian Junker was no more racist than a British aristocrat or an American Boston Brahmin. I believe in making one’s arguments one should be punctilious in adherence to facts. Wallace was in this piece channeling a particular sort of anti-German inflected “root cause” argument which would be exposited later in the “Authoritarian Personality” arguments, and derive from early 20th century rivalries between the Anglo world and the rising Germany.

Second, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels came from Catholic backgrounds. None of them were obviously practicing Catholics, but their disdain for the religion was a general one derived from their skepticism of Christianity. The reference to anti-Catholic is simply due to the fact that Wallace wants to connect to American readers in the 1940s, where prejudice against ethnic whites, and in particular Roman Catholics, was common.

Later on the piece tips its hand as to why it is so out of place in today’s world:

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

…

Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.

Henry Wallace is famous for being totally wrong when it came to the possibility of the threat from Communism. His 1948 campaign for the presidency was dogged by ties to, and influence from, American Communists. Wallace was an anti-anti-Communist.

To be fair to him, Henry Wallace did change his mind on Communism in the 1950s.

But it’s somewhat strange to see him being presented as a prescient thinker when he admits that in 1944 on a visit to the Soviet Union he was duped.

Posted in Communism | Tagged Henry Wallace | Comments Off

Pope Francis against the Individual

Posted on April 30, 2017 by Andrew Stuttaford

On stage, Pope Francis, like Juan Perón, his predecessor in so many respects, can be a vivid speaker. The same cannot be said of his prose, where his arguments are all too often swamped by jargon, citation and the failed, muddy language of someone who cannot, I am afraid, quite keep up.

In the course of a new screed the Pope turns his attention (as so often) to neo-liberalism, that rarely seen, frequently imagined bogeyman that seems to spend so much time rattling around the papal skull:

A society in which the true fraternity dissolves is not capable of having a future; a society in which only “giving in order to have” or the “giving out of duty” exist, is not capable of progressing. That is why neither the liberal-individualist vision of the world, in which everything (or almost) is an exchange, nor the state-centric vision of society, in which everything (or almost) is a duty, are safe guides for overcoming inequality, inequity and exclusion that now overwhelm our societies. It is a search for a way out of the suffocating alternative between the neoliberal thesis and that neo-state-centric thesis.

Leaving aside the fact that Francis’ description of the ‘liberal-individualist vision’ is little more than stale demagogic caricature—something of a specialty of this pope–his call for a ‘third way’ between free market systems and socialism shouldn’t be missed. In reality, that’s we already have across the West, but what Francis wants is something akin to the corporatism (there are unkinder words) that did so much damage to his native Argentina.

And as always with Francis, his perspective is saturated with conspiracism, often vintage conspiracism:

Almost one hundred years ago, Pius XI [warned of] a global economic dictatorship that he called the “international imperialism” of money.

Hmmm

And then Francis turns his attention to a fresh enemy—demagogues can never have enough enemies—in this case the “invasion…at high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools…of libertarian individualism”, an invasion, it must be said, is not immediately apparent to me. Looking at today’s schools, and even more so the universities, very little libertarian individualism seems to be on display. On the contrary, we see the collectivism of the left, being enforced with ever increasing degrees of rigor, something that this Pope whether by ignorance, malice or willful ideological blindness or a blend of all three has chosen to overlook.

The Pope continues:

If individualism affirms that it is only the individual who gives value to things and interpersonal relationships, and so it is only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad, then libertarianism, today in fashion, preaches that to establish freedom and individual responsibility, it is necessary to resort to the idea of “self-causation”.

But individualism does not affirm (or does not have to affirm) that it is only the individual who gives value to things…

Over at Reason (of course!), Stephanie Slade writes:

As with [the Pope’s] comments about capitalism, then, the problem is not so much that he’s speaking to issues that go beyond the scope of his office; the problem is his speaking to matters on which he is ill-informed. In this case, his statements betray a shallowness in his understanding of the philosophy he’s impugning. If he took the time to really engage with our ideas, he might be surprised by what he learned.

He might, for instance, be taken aback to discover that many libertarians hold beliefs that transcend an Ayn Randian glorification of selfishness (and that Ayn Rand rejected us, too, by the way)…. Or that lots of us are deeply concerned with the tangible outcomes that policies have on vulnerable communities, and that libertarians’ support for capitalism is very often rooted in its ability to make the world a better place. Or that some of us are even—hold on to your zucchetto—followers of Christ.

Most of all, he would likely be startled to find that, far from thinking “only the individual decides what is good and what is evil,” few libertarians are moral relativists. (Except the Objectivists, of course. Or am I getting that wrong?) Speaking as a devotee of St. John Paul II, one of the great articulators of the importance of accepting Truth as such, this one is actually personal.

It’s hard not to wonder whether Pope Francis knows any libertarians. In the event he’s interested in discussing the ideas of free minds and free markets with someone who ascribes to them, I’d be happy to make myself available.

Stephanie should not hold her breath. Locked into his own convictions, and, like many demagogues, both bully and intellectual coward, Francis has shown himself prepared to talk things over with those whose disagreement—a tame atheist or two—runs on predictable lines unlikely to dent his faith, but to be prepared to debate people who offer a serious challenge to his political prescriptions, well…

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged freedom and individual liberty, libertarianism, Pope Francis | Comments Off

The Fires of Easter

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Andrew Stuttaford

From the not always reliable The Golden Bough:

In Münsterland these Easter fires are always kindled upon certain definite hills, which are hence known as Easter or Paschal Mountains. The whole community assembles about the fire. The young men and maidens, singing Easter hymns, march round and round the fire, till the blaze dies down. Then the girls jump over the fire in a line, one after the other, each supported by two young men who hold her hands and run beside her. In the twilight boys with blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful. At Delmenhorst, in Oldenburg, it used to be the custom to cut down two trees, plant them in the ground side by side, and pile twelve tar-barrels against each. Brush-wood was then heaped about the trees, and on the evening of Easter Saturday the boys, after rushing about with blazing bean-poles in their hands, set fire to the whole. At the end of the ceremony the urchins tried to blacken each other and the clothes of grown-up people. In the Altmark it is believed that as far as the blaze of the Easter bonfire is visible, the corn will grow well throughout the year, and no conflagration will break out. At Braunröde, in the Harz Mountains, it was the custom to burn squirrels in the Easter bonfire. In the Altmark, bones were burned in it.

Happy Easter!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Christmas and other holidays, Easter | Comments Off

Welcome, Republican Atheists!

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Andrew Stuttaford

Writing over at Patheos, the Friendly Atheist reports on the formation of the group Republican Atheists.

That’s good news, I reckon, but the Friendly Atheist seems a little, well, skeptical:

The group hopes to “build awareness of Atheist presence in the Republican Party,” though it may have more success building awareness of Republicans among the broader atheist community. The 116 likes on Facebook and 37 followers on Twitter suggest there’s a lot of room to grow. A survey conducted in 2015 among members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation revealed only one percent identified as Republicans — the low end — while a 2014 Pew Research Center survey said Republicans represented 15% of atheists.

According to Lauren Ell, the president of Republican Atheists, the group’s main intention isn’t to influence the legislative or electoral process. Not yet, anyway. Instead, she said in an email, they want to “challenge the concept that atheist equals Democrat and Republican equals religion.”

This is an important time to note that disbelieving in deities doesn’t mean a person necessarily aligns with any particular ideology, political or otherwise. If the existence of this group has you scratching your head — why would any atheist align with this Republican Party? — keep in mind that many of them may support a GOP that even many Republican politicians no longer recognize. They support the ideas of smaller government, fewer taxes, and more personal freedom, but not necessarily a party that seems to have merged with the Religious Right.

Oh come on.

That wasn’t true before Trump, and it’s even harder to claim that now.

Political parties, like (for the most part) religious groups, are coalitions. The faithful agree with this, they disagree with that, but on balance they stick with the creed with which they are, as a whole, most comfortable. What’s more, a choice of political party is often a vote against rather than a vote for. For all its faults, the Republican party is still the best bulwark there is against the Democrats.

To the Friendly Atheist, the Republican Atheists may be displaying “cognitive dissonance”, but that observation might say more about his beliefs than theirs. Some of the GOP policies most associated with the religious right (opposition to abortion, say) can be supported for reasons unrelated to the supposed commands of a mysteriously elusive God.

Equally, there is no reason that atheists, if they believe that religion is hard-wired into most of us (as I do), to be disturbed by a little God talk by a politician on the make (or, even, sincerely). Nor is there any need for atheists to waste time and goodwill pushing the church-and-state separation contained in the First Amendment to the bizarre extreme that they sometimes do. Religion can be a useful social glue (that’s probably part of the reason it evolved), and, as such, it is something that a conservative atheist might be expected to appreciate even if he or she believes that the underlying premise is nonsense.

To be fair, the Friendly Atheist notes:

“[A]theist” only means one thing: you don’t believe in a god. While there’s obviously a large overlap between atheists and liberals, it’s not an ironclad rule.

No it is not, either in the US or, even more so, Europe.

If I had to guess, the ‘large overlap’ here in the US owes more to the specifics of American history and culture rather than any ideological imperative.

All that said, there’s a reason that this blog is named Secular Right rather than Secular Republican or, even, Secular Conservative.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged atheism, Republican Atheists, Republican Party | Comments Off