LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
Actually, you can't for most subjects.
I spent the last 20 minutes looking for it and I can't find it but a number of years ago I remember seeing data about the political afflication of professors by party, either Democrat or Republican (I think it was out of Jonathan Haidt's work but not 100% sure).
Anyway, the end result was that the balance (and this was back in the 2016-2018 era) was abysmal. Like really really bad. Most subjects had maybe 10 out of every 100 professors were Republican or Republican leaning. Some even lower. There was one or two subjects (I think was English literature and one other thing maybe) where they could not find a single Republican leaning professor at all, from their survey. The only subjects that had a "reasonable" balance of Democrat and Republicans were I think engineering and economics (unsurprisingly), but even that was like 60-40 D-R.
It means in most colleges, outside of engineering and economics, you might have 1 or 2 Republican professors in the whole college, and the vast majority of disciplines in any given university would not have a single Republican leaning professor.
I know Republican != conservative (honestly it's probably worse), and I might be misremembering the data slightly.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
A fantastic comment I remember reading (I think it was back on Reddit?) was "all marriages are gay marriages now". It was about the increasingly meaningless of legal definition of marriage, or along those lines. If anyone has a link that would be appreciated.
You are correct, it's protecting EU domestic markets from foreign 'similar' products from using the geographical indicators (although the EU has occasionally managed to extend that protection to other markets). So Australian sparkling white wine can't use the name 'champagne' in European markets. This was a major sticking point during fairly recent Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations (Australia is a major agricultural exporter), particularly around products like feta, parmesan, prosecco, and was instrumental in the collapse of negotiations along with other agriculture protectionist policies. Now, one might think it's fair for the Europeans to do this to protect their cultural culinary heritage - I wouldn't disagree. But it does still provide a non-tariff trade barrier (i.e. is a protectionist policy) against potentially more competitive imports.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5mo ago
I am Spartacus!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
The point of that original comment was to provide a historical throughline throughout history in leftist thought, which I think it does pretty conclusive for a relatively short post. Later in that original thread I provide an example of a contemporary article.
Futurity and Childhood Innocence: Beyond the Injury of Development by Hannah Dyer (2016)
Other people in this current threat have provided other examples. It's not hard to find articles/academic publications on this stuff if you go looking.
My point was to look at leftist academic thought, which is always upstream of what (leftist) normies think. It may or may not make its way downstream in the future. Probably not as the tide is turning against leftism, and that pedophilia is so intrinsically evil and disordered that normies can't abstract it way like other things.
I actually think the argument anout adulthood 'shifiting to mid-twenties' is actually in favour of the deconstruction of child and adult, not against it, as it makes the boundaries between child and adults, fuzzier, not clearer. Young adults are being infantalized, extended adolescence. The concept of 'adulting' is classic deconstructionism - adult is now something your perform, rather than something you are.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
To a degree, yes, you're correct, it's just then which regulations or protections are generally considered legitimate, and don't hinder the 'spirit' of free trade. Although with health and safety regulation specifically is that they're competing on an even playing field in that specific market with domestic goods - this isn't the case with all (most) non-tariff trade barriers, which often put additional burdens on imported goods that domestic goods don't have to meet, or are structured in such a way to make it far easier for domestic goods to meet the requirements.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
This is not speculation on my part. Israel did, in fact, ask the US to invade Iran first and not Iraq.
There's various sources for this including from US officials such as Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell. It's also stated in Mearsheimer's Israel Lobby book from memory.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
Obligatory John Adams quote.
Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
It's trivial (conceptually, if not practically) to structure your non-tariff trade barriers, such as the CBAM, to favour domestic producers over foreign imports - e.g. calculating emissions of imports in a unfavourable way. Indeed, the CBAM has been accused of doing just that. It also inherently favours domestic European goods due to the lower transport emissions and the fact the Europeans are trying to develop green industries. The Europeans of course argue this is simply a green policy, and this is merely leveling the playing field in the name of the environment. Maybe this true - but the fact it favours domestic industry must surely be a nice bonus.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
I said I am not specifically defending Trump's implementation of tariffs - there's a lot to criticise even if you're someone who is generally in favour of protectionism.
Any large macroeconomic change is going to have short term economic shocks, basically regardless of what exactly they are.
The concern is not what the short term economic impacts will be on what remains of American industry, but (re)developing a long term industrial base. Whether the tariffs achieve that is up for debate and remains to be seen. The ship may have already sailed.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
The 80s aren't 30 years ago
Ah!
Regardless, while there were some indication of deindustrialisation earlier, the late 80s/early 90s were a critical inflection point - it's when economic relations with China began to normalise, allowing China grow explosive, and Chinese exports grew enormously during the 90s (and later other Asian nations such as Vietnam and India) In America specifically, NAFTA was signed in 1994.
Also, I find it funny all the grandstanding about free trade in the media - while free trade has been a principle since the end of WW2, in reality completely and absolute free trade has only really been a thing for the last 20-30 years. The 1950s-1990s had a moderate amount of tariffs and other trade restrictions. Short memories.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
Trump specifically mentions that Palestinians will be part of the 'international zone', though.
"I envision the world's people living there. You'll make it into an international, unbelievable place. The entire world will be there - Palestinians also - many people will live there. they tried the other for decades and decades, it's not gonna work.
International zones is history have typically been led by a major power, not literally the entire international community. Shanghai by the British and Americans, Tangiers by the French (with support from Britain and Spain) etc.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5mo ago
Chinese value excellence.
A bizarre statement to make about the country that has sewer oil, tofu-dreg buildings, mass counterfeiting of products, extreme academic cheating, among other fraudulent practices.
I don't want to overstate the amount of fraudulent activity that occurs in China, but clearly China's version of "excellence" is a less virtuous and more selfish that how most people would use the term. "Results and personal gain at all costs, even if it's fraud" is certainly one way to define excellence.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
6mo ago
There was a short thread discussing this issue while ago.
The short version is that Christians are obligated to act with charity and love to all people. However, that does not mean Christians shouldn't condemn the sins people have committed and treat them out harshly out of love (love is willing the good of the other - the good of the other may require some 'tough love'). This includes accepting there may be temporal consequences for sin (penance is built around this concept, but also consequences outside of penance). Additionally, there is a significant degree of prudential judgement Christians should excerise when it comes to determining genuine conversion or not. After all, Jesus warns against 'wolves in sheep's clothing' and false prophets more than once. False prophets easily extends to those who claim to have had an encounter with Christ (i.e. a conversion).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Yes, this is what progressive actually believe (what did you think "all sex is rape" meant?). They don't want sex to exist and act accordingly; that's why all of their "pedo literature" is oppression porn and why all of their efforts to educate children about sex center around portraying sex as ugly and terrible.
I notice you ignored the second part of what I said from quoting me. Leftist are sexual utopians at their core, they just believe they have to radically deconstruct and destroy all existing sexual relationships (because they're oppressive) before the sexual utopia will somehow appear. This is the core concept of critical theory, as applied to sex.
To an overwhelming degree, it's a possession/preservation fetish...
...Progressive thought fetishizes innocence, so what we would expect from that is a bunch of so-called "pedo literature" that fails to actually contain any pedophilia [in the "straight man on little girl" sense], and what you actually should be looking for is, again, the fetishization of what they consider innocence.
They fetishizes insofar as they want to get rid of the concept of innocence. It's not preservation fetish, they want to destroy it. That's not my assertion, it's quite literally what they say, as has been already cited by me and others. Your shota reference example in your linked comment is a terrible example, both by the fact it's not a central example of leftism (if it's related to leftism at all), and by the fact that corruption is a central theme. It's about the loss of innocence - so I don't see how it supports your point.
I actually don't think we're really disagreeing her. The reason the leftist hates innocence is because they think it's a concept created by the oppressor class (cis-hetero-capitalist patriarchy or whatever variation you want to use) to control everyone and prevent them from enjoying the fruits of 'sexual liberation' (in both the physical and metaphysical sense).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Sure, it blocks intra-EU competition, but the EU is effectively acting as a cabal here - Franch gets champagne, Greece gets feta, Italy gets prosecco and so on. They agree to not interfere with each other in exchange dor working together to impose the restrictions on the rest of the world.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5mo ago
Copying an old comment of mine (and follow up topic) from a couple years ago on a similar topic:
By 'colonialism' I assume you're referring to style of so-called 'exploitative colonialism' of Africa and Asia during the 19th century, I think a poor name that betrays the ideological perspective the dominates the analysis of colonialism today. I think the style of 'settler colonialism' of the Americas etc. are not possible today for more fairly obvious reasons.
I do think many of the below comments are correct that nationalism has played a significant role in making colonialism extremely difficult to enforce in the present day. In the past, there was not a huge amount of difference whether you paid taxes to or have allegiance to a 'local' lord or king, or a foreign lord or king. For example in India, for the Rajas who existed British rule, pragmatically there was not much difference between allegiance to a 'local' Islamic Persianised ruler (Mughals) or to the British. Indeed, many Rajas willingly switched allegiance to the British, which they saw as preferable. By and large, colonial rule was legitimate - the colonial powers couldn't have governed such large amounts of land with such little Western manpower otherwise. This changed with the development of a national identity in the colonial states, which ironically is a Western import. Anti-colonialism is ironically a Western invention. What you see consistently during the decolonisation period was Western educated local elites picking up Western political philosophy (liberalism and socialism too) often during their travels and education in the West, and using that as a basis for decolonisation and nationalism. It's the case for figures like Kwame Nkrumah, Obafemi Awolowo, even Gandhi. Once nationalism took hold in colonial regions, it became socially and politically untenable for a militant minority of the local population to be administered by a group deemed not part of the new national identity (anti-colonial movements usually did not have majority support), regardless of any material benefits. Indeed, many of these countries collapsed immediately after decolonisation. A matter of national pride as it were. This is really no different to the Springtime of Nations, where Italians, Czechs, Hungarians opposed Austrian rule (no matter how nominal), Poles under German rule etc.
Another major factor is that there is just no political will to do colonialism in modern societies. A major motivating factor behind the 19th Century colonialism was the Civilising Mission. While this is often the subject of contemporary revisionism like the term 'exploitative colonialism', there was a strong altruistic motivation to European colonialism. The 19th Century was a period of great intellectual and economic progress, and many Europeans strongly believed they had a moral, often religious imperative to bring this progress and civilisation to the unfortunate primitive peoples of Africa and Asia. Again, their motivations were primarily altruistic, whether you think those motivations have merit or where legitimate is up to the reader. The reality is that with a handful of exceptions, colonialism was actually incredibly expensive for European powers and largely was a net deficit for the coloniser, not a benefit, mostly motivated by colonial prestige and the moral imperative of civilising. Building infrastructure, schools, hospitals and a functioning bureaucracy all from scratch isn't exactly cheap. Otto von Bismark was famously anti-colonial, not out of any compassion for would-be colonised people, but rather he saw it as a significant waste of resources that could be spent on strengthening Germany. Germany would eventually reluctantly join the colonial race anyway due to international peer pressure and prestige. This ties into my own personal theory for why I think decolonisation took hold in not just the colonial states themselves, but also in the Western academia and elite in the mid-20th Century - postwar Europe had been devastated by WW2 and could not afford to maintain its colonies, but needed a moral justification to abandon the colonies, if at least to save face. The decolonial movement was that justification - Western elites had a genuine motivation to promote or at least passively accept decolonisation to absolve themselves of any responsibility they may have had to colonial states and people they governed. Though, this may have come back to bite them decades later, giving fuel to what would one day become the contemporary critical social justice movement and anti-Western sentiment in academia more generally. Kind of like the CIA funding the Mujahideen.
As other comments have also mentioned, contemporary Western states just don't do colonialism correctly, in large part caused by ideological and political concerns. To use the common America and Afghanistan (or Iraq) example, the 'correct' or functional way to do colonialism is to copy what the British did, ally with local elites, prop them up, arm them, and help them destroy their enemies, but otherwise keep local governance structures intact (the British were more than happy for local allied chiefs, shieks or rajas to govern their own territory as long as they kept to certain conditions. This is not what the Americans did or tried to do - instead, they tried to completely supplant local government structures by installing a completely foreign, Western style liberal democracy in those states that has no legitimacy and collapses under its own weight. Part of the reason for this is that America is so narcissistic that it thinks that remaking the world into America-style liberal democracies ("spreading democracy/freedom") is just the Greatest Thing Ever, but also because functional British style colonialism would never fly in the ideological waters the West is currently in - human rights, self determination, colonialism creating 'evil' hierarchies and so on. So the Americans have to try and do 'non-colonial colonialism' which obviously doesn't work.
Another thing to consider is that 21st century societies simply don't operate in the same way a 19th century society does, and we shouldn't expect contemporary colonialism to resemble previous colonialism. Obviously, this brings in the neo-colonialism debate. To simplify greatly, modern service economies and financial systems and multinational corporations may have made old boots-on-the-ground colonialism redundant. Why do you need to literally, physically control the governance of states in Africa when you can achieve the same effect from a distance with IMF loans? And it's not just the West - what China is doing could also be called neo-colonialism as well, least of all with the Belt and Road Initiative, where China will indebt half of Africa to China and basically have control of all their finances.
I'm not convinced by the (military) technology arguments put forward by many of the other commenters here. There are several reasons for this. First, the vast majority of European colonialism in the 19th century was not done through military conquest, but primarily through diplomatic means and gaining the allegiance of local elites. This is not to say there was no war, but there was very little compared to the scale we're talking about. You can perhaps make an argument that there was still a lot of indirect military conquest as Western powers would arm and fund elites favorable to them who would then conquer their rivals, but this is both indirect, and negates a lot of the apparent technological advantage by using an intermediary. Secondly, many of the colonised states weren't actually that far behind the Europeans in military technology. India in particular was home to the 'Gunpowder Empire' of the Mughals who were very familiar with advanced firearms long before Crown rule in India. The British defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan war is another good example of this. Third, even when the Europeans had a clear military technology advantage, it still wasn't a clearly decisive factor. The clearest example of this was the Anglo-Zulu War, where the Zulus nearly beat the British despite only having mostly iron-age technology. Fourth, it's not clear to me that the technological disparity between, for example, the British Empire and Iraq in 19th century is larger than it is between the USA and Iraq today. The Americans have a level of military sophistication that is miles ahead of anyone in the Global South. The Americans steamrolled Saddam's forces in 2003. But in my opinion, colonialism was never really a question of military might or technology, but of governance and legitimacy. This is not to say military technology provided no edge for the Europeans, but I think it is generally overstated. Which leads me to my next point:
I might be convinced that technological superiority might be a reason for 19th century colonial success if the technological superiority being described was social, political and economic technology, rather than military technology. Simply put, the Europeans were generally far better administrators, in many cases building a functioning, large-scale administrative system where previously there had only been anarchic tribal and ethnic conflict. The Europeans brought with them engineering, medicine, rule of law and so on, which did wonders for their legitimacy. This gap in social/economic technology between the Europeans and colonial states in the 19th century is still probably larger than the Europeans and even the most dysfunctional post-colonial state (e.g. Somalia) today, though I might be convinced otherwise.
To conclude, I want to link to the article the Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley, which I have previously posted on /r/theMotte, rebuts much of the anti-colonialist literature. While not explicitly about the topic at hand, its arguments are highly relevant.
Was the key to colonialism leaving the locals alone as long as they paid up ("otherwise keep local governance structures intact"), or actively trying to change their values ("bring this progress and civilisation to the unfortunate primitive peoples of Africa and Asia")?
As contradictory as it sounds, it was both. The Europeans, and particularly the British, were smart administrators and governors. They knew how to adapt to local political and cultural circumstances while promoting their own political and social goals in a way that contemporary Western states seem to be unable to do. The majority of the British Empire in Africa and Asia was administered via indirect rule. In 1947, even after centuries of British rule (both Company and Crown) and the gradual annexation of many of the Princely States (including the doctrine of lapse), the Princely States still consisted of ~40% of British India by land. But the Princely States weren't just some isolationist islands in the middle of British India, however. They had railways build through them, hospitals and Western schools etc. The difference is that the British worked with the local Rajas who still had a great deal of autonomy and authority. Over decades, many of the Rajas would actually give up significant autonomy and give more authority to the British because it was simply more convenient for them. This general approach was true of other parts of the British Empire, and the European colonisers more generally.
It was not the American approach of storming in to a country, creating a new Western-style liberal democratic government from nothing and expecting everyone to instantly to like it. To use another historical comparison, even when the British (under Company rule) did militarily conquer the Sikh Empire, which was their largest military expansion of the British Rule in India, they did not immediately put the whole region under direct rule, but rather restored many Rajas in the former territory of the Sikh Empire.
Are we saying the Right Way to do Afghanistan would have been to let 'em keep their women in burquas and girls' schools closed and other such things, just pay us some taxes and give up any international terrorists who particularly annoy us? I guess I could buy that, though I'm not sure it's what 19th century Britain would do.
Yes and no. The Right Way to do things would certainly to have have more tacit, been less gung-ho about the whole thing and curb their excessive moralizing. Did you know that the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan has a provision that 25% of the seats of the Afghan Parliament are to be reserved exclusively for women? Such a provision would be extremely controversial in many Western states, let alone extremely Islamic conservative Afghanistan. The Americans should at the very least not expect to remake Afghanistan overnight, which is seemingly exactly what they thought they could do. To emphasise the point from above, European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries was a gradual process that involved slow integration and change while using indirect rule and local institutions.
I could see Iraq as being a "Civilising Mission" thing - the word at the time was, we knock off Saddam and bring 'em Democracy, Whiskey, and Sexy and they'll just love us right away and it'll go great. Was the problem the lack of widespread and long-lasting zeal about that mission, or that it just plain didn't work?
A while back, I saw an interview that Condoleezza Rice gave to the Hoover Institution in which they discussed the Iraq War. In the interview, Rice basically just straight out admitted that the Bush administration and the US military has no idea what they were getting themselves into in terms of local politics. They had very little knowledge of local power dynamics, local tribal conflicts and alliances, or any kind of understanding of the local Iraqi political and social circumstances in general. The attitude of the Americans seem to literally have been more or less exactly what you describe - 'the Iraqis are just like Americans, crying out for American democracy, if we topple the Saddam and install a democratic government everything will just kind of work itself out'. I doubt the British even in the height of their power were ever so naive and arrogant. Again, you can't change a country and its culture overnight.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
8mo ago
As some of the other comments have already pointed out, it's not man's place to determine whether someone has truly converted and repented, it's God's.
In the Gospels, there are two parables (that I can recall of the top of my head) that deal with this issue - The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), which is relatively well known even to non-Christians, but also the perhaps lesser known the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20) where, abridging siginificantly, the workers who were recruited later and did less work on the vineyard were paid the same who were recruited earlier.
Regardless, there certainly should be a degree of prudential judgement and healthy dose of scepticism about a convert like the one you are describing. That is, someone who seems to be converting merely because it is convenient and beneficial for themselves and not a genuine conversion. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be welcomed by the community broadly, but that they're not necessarily going to get 'benefit' of finding a tradional spouse.
The Catholic perspective on this (I don't have time to go find the supporting sections in the Catechism/other sources) is that God will forgive you of your spiritual sin, but that doesn't mean you're immune from the temporal consequences of your sin. This is fairly obvious when talking about a sin like murder. You still have to serve your prison sentence (and Catholics would broadly support that even if you repented), and when you are released and try to integrate back into society people would rightfully be wary of you even if you became a Christian.
Similarly, a formally promiscuous man or woman may struggle to find an always traditional, virginal woman or man to marry. That's just a temporal consequence of their sin. Maybe if they are sincere then someone may accept them and marry them regardless (perhaps even someone who was in a similar situation!). But quite possibly not. In some sense, it may effectively be penance for their sin. They're not guaranteed marriage, it may not be their vocation.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
I can kind of see the logic up until the point of porn, where still falls apart because the neckbeard men portrayed in the ad are the most stereotypical, prototypical consumer of porn. They're exactly the kind of men portrayed or people imagine as going into adult video stores in the 80s. Even if all the other points were true, in no way could you convince me that those men are the kind of men who want to ban porn, which the ad implies.
But I suppose they just have paper over that because as makers of the ad are 'sex-positive' as you say (which includes porn) that just have to pretend like these guys wouldn't be consuming porn.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
I don't use social media that much and don't intend to go dumpster diving just to fulfil your demand. That being said, I know there's at least a handful of "Breadtube" type 'influencers' who have made various comments about age of consent and the like. Any 'serious' leftist intellectual is not going to put their thoughts on social media, where they will and can be eviscerated by normies, they're going to put it in academic text hidden behind jargon which I have already shown.
20 years ago, open public support for gay 'marriage' was unthinkable. 10 years ago, transgenderism was a tiny, tiny fringe and mostly a joke.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
The question is what do those names actually mean to consumers. At least here in Australia, names like 'feta' are fully genericised - they don't have to come from a particular region in Greece. This is true for a lot of names, though the EU has taken great pains to reverse this.
When a consumer goes to buy feta, what exactly are they looking for? If two products are virtually identicial, taste the same, same texture, but one happens to be made in Australia and one in Greece, do most consumers actually care? Do they just want a lower price (I'm sure some foodies will claim there are subtle but irreducible differences).
At what point does a name become genericised to the point of referring to a type of product, rather that than referring to the geographical origin of a product? Danish pastries certainly aren't just made in Denmark.
It is a legitimate criticism to say that a consumer might be looking for feta and not care if it's from either Australia or Greece, but EU geographical indicators hide Australia 'feta' from consumers as a potential option, and this constitutes protectionism.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
That was it, thank you!!!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
6mo ago
How timely - Sargon/Carl Benjamin just released a video Lindsay and everything described above. I haven't watched it yet it but Sargon, unsurprisingly, seems critical of Lindsay.
I am reasonably sympathetic to Sargon. He's been somewhat cringe and said some stupid things in the past (especially when he ran as a candidate for UKIP a while ago), but it's clear his views have evolved and matured significantly from what they were even a few years ago, let alone from the GamerGate era which kickstarted his e-fame.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
6mo ago
Could this not be explained by women with high education marrying men with high or even higher education (i.e. wealthy men), which has a positive effect on fertility. Confounder?
I agree, the messaging just seems so bizarre and dissonant.
Normally the fat, sweat, ungroomed neckbeard stereotype is meant to be obsessed with porn, but instead the message in this ad is that they hate porn? That normal, upstanding citizens like sexual deviancy and that the neckbeard losers are actually the prudes? It's just so topsy-turvy that it's actually hard to wrap my brain around it for how counter-intuitive the messaging is.
Will it work on voters? Who knows, despite how counter-intuitive it is. Not even 100% who the target of this ad is mean to be.
More options
Context Copy link