Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (07⧸05⧸2017)

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May 7, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

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This Week in Stupid (07⧸05⧸2017)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to This Week in Stupid for the 7th of May 2017.
	This week we're going to be talking about Enlightenment values.
	So Guardian columnist Will Hutton says, never before in my adult life has the future seemed so bleak for progressives.
	Honestly Will, I'm kind of glad, and it really plays into the tagline of this article, as a series of catastrophes unfold, Enlightenment values are being trashed.
	Why yes they are Will.
	That's exactly what's been going on and it has been going on for some time now.
	I'm glad you finally noticed Will.
	Britain is a country of the European Enlightenment, or so I've thought.
	Yes, me too.
	For decades we have muddled through without a written constitution, but the impact of a referendum that went against majority opinion in Parliament?
	Who gives a shit, Will?
	Fuck majority opinion in Parliament.
	The people had a fucking referendum, man.
	Along with a desperately weak parliamentary opposition, well you can blame Corbyn, and a weaponised right-wing media.
	Oh yeah, like the left-wing media hasn't also been weaponised, and like the weaponisation of media is new anyway, but okay, and a lack of mass support for the rule of law has shown how vulnerable our civilisation is to know-nothing populism and a profoundly dysfunctional democracy.
	Are you insane?
	This recent spate of elections has actually demonstrated that we actually still live in healthy democracies, where people who do have a problem, when there becomes enough people with a problem, can have their voices heard and they can make a change.
	That's a good thing.
	That actually means we have healthy democratic systems.
	But this know-nothing populism, this fucking elitism, is why you are in the boat that you're in, as well as the blind insistence to not see the flaws in your own movement.
	But don't worry, Will, I will show you these throughout the course of this video, using examples from this week.
	Enlightenment values, tolerance, respect for the importance of fair debate, checked and balanced government, objectivity and impartiality, recognition of international independencies are being trashed.
	Alrighty then, let's talk about Enlightenment values.
	Let's talk about how the word tolerance sank an LGBT petition in Australia.
	It was a well-meaning campaign designed to address bullying of LGBT students in Australian schools, but a day after its high-profile launch, backed by some celebrities, the petition was withdrawn in a swirl of controversy.
	Why?
	On Tuesday, the open letter organised by a Sydney man called on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to commit $6 million to funding a new anti-bullying programme.
	With a focus on LGBT issues in schools and domestic violence, the programme would target all forms of bullying, including that which is based on religion, race, gender, faith, sexuality, disability, skin conditions, social standing, or political persuasions.
	The letter said, this probably not being the limit of the control over other people's actions that these people want, but certainly being the beginning of it.
	It followed an intensely debated similar scheme, Safe Schools, which was launched in 2014, but significantly curtailed and then dumped in one state after criticism from conservative politicians, lobby groups and sections of the media.
	I like the way they've brought in conservative.
	They could have said opposition.
	And notice they didn't give us the political alignment of the groups presenting this.
	Presenting them as if this is the neutral natural state of things.
	This is exactly what feminists complain about when they complain about things like the patriarchy and heteronormativity.
	This is like left-wing political normativity.
	This is why I get pissed off when people say, oh, the BBC is neutral and objective.
	No, it's not.
	Anyway, the critics said it raised sexual issues that were inappropriate for teenagers and young children.
	So the proposal was intended to depoliticise and remove controversy surrounding LGBT education in schools.
	Celebrities, including whoever, and it's even attracted support from an unlikely source.
	The Australian Christian Lobby, a conservative group.
	Again, why do you have to tell us they're conservative?
	You did not tell us that the LGBT one was progressive.
	It just bothers me, you know?
	It's like, just be consistent.
	Just say progressive LGBT group.
	If you're going to give people their political affiliation.
	But this is the bit we really have to pay attention to here, Will.
	Just to see what you were in bed with, right?
	But it attracted immediate criticism for urging tolerance rather than acceptance.
	Do you understand what that means, Will?
	I'm pretty sure you do, but I'm going to lay it out just in case you're not entirely certain.
	That means they're going to force you to do something.
	It's not enough that you have to simply do nothing.
	They are going to force you to do something.
	They want to make you accept them, not just tolerate them.
	And I'm sorry, you don't get to determine what other people have to accept.
	You do not get to determine other people's judgments.
	I mean, look at what they're saying.
	Tolerance.
	You're gross, but I'll refrain from bashing you.
	That's all you were entitled to.
	And let's be honest, you could hardly consider these people to be tolerant of opposing viewpoints themselves, and much less accepting of them.
	So I guess another aspect to this is the rampant hypocrisy.
	I mean, look at the username of one of these.
	Men Don't At Me.
	That's the kind of people that you are dealing with.
	They're fucking bigots.
	I don't give a fuck what they have to say.
	And they're such phenomenal bigots, they're going to sink a petition that would have benefited them personally because it wasn't good enough.
	That's bullshit.
	It sounds to me like I'm supposed to beg people to be tolerant of my child's existence.
	No, that's what you're entitled to.
	That's what they're going to get as per the law of the land.
	Equality and acceptance is the starting point.
	Not downgrading to tolerance.
	They're literally saying exactly how they feel about this.
	It will be our values, not yours.
	And we will force our values on you.
	And the thing is, none of this would be even vaguely worth talking about if the person who started the petition and the celebrities supporting it all just said, look, we don't care.
	You're being a bunch of dicks.
	This is a good thing.
	Shut up.
	Go away.
	But they didn't.
	They fucking cucked to them.
	Every goddamn time.
	In every single ideological organization, I see the radicals end up taking control because the moderates end up cucking because they're not pure enough.
	Every single time.
	Look at this.
	Petition organizer Ben Grubb, a PR advisor, wrote a lengthy apology to the LGBT community following the backlash.
	What horseshit?
	It's like probably like a few dozen of them on Twitter.
	And yet, they were offended, and so good God, everything had to be changed, even though most people were just fine with it.
	That's such an elitist attitude.
	That creates a privileged class of whiners who get their way by whining.
	If most people are fine with it, fuck those people.
	That's how that works.
	Otherwise, you have a minority dictating to a majority, which is hardly a democratic method of doing things, is it?
	But not that you consider any of this shit, Will.
	This is something that's endemic to the left.
	This is just one example from this week.
	It happens all the time, fucking everywhere these people go.
	But this is just one example.
	And I could pull just an example from this week.
	Like, because it happens all the time.
	It's...
	Oh, fuck me.
	I wish people would goddamn listen.
	You are actually talking about the values that your own people in your own movement are sabotaging.
	And you are incapable of separating between liberal and progressive values.
	They just happen to overlap sometimes.
	They're not the same.
	The end goal is meant to be liberty.
	This isn't liberty.
	Having people tell you what you have to accept is not liberty.
	You are not at liberty to reject it.
	So, what's next?
	Oh yes, respect for the importance of fair debate.
	That's rather an amusing thing to come to, isn't it?
	I wonder where I'm going to look for an example of that this week.
	You guessed it, universities in the West, because they have real problems with progressives on their campuses.
	So naturally, people have noticed a pattern at this point.
	A speaker is invited, often by a conservative student group.
	Other students oppose the speaker on the grounds that they are right-wing or whatever it is, very tolerant, by the way, and maybe they protest.
	If the speech happens, the speaker is heckled.
	Sometimes there's violence.
	So tolerant!
	In other cases, as with Conservative commentator Anne Coulter at University of California, Berkeley last week, the event was called off.
	How progressive.
	I guess you don't have to worry about protesters not respecting the importance of free debate if you call the debate off, tap, tap, tap.
	It is just amusing how bad this has gotten.
	A handful of states including Illinois, Tennessee, Colorado, and Arizona, have passed or introduced legislation designed to prevent these incidents from happening.
	The bills differ from state-state, but they're generally based on a model written by the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Arizona.
	You have actually got libertarians asking for government interference in universities.
	Progressives have become so awful.
	They have libertarian think tanks advocating for statism.
	He says, the yawning gap between the universities' role as citizens of free inquiry and the ugly reality of campus censorship is often the fault of the administrators who share the progressive belief that universities must restrict speech to protect the sensitivities of minorities and women.
	What that means, Will, is that these people do not hold freedom of speech as a value, as a belief.
	They do not.
	That means that these people do not hold freedom of speech as an important value.
	That means these people do not hold freedom of speech as an important value.
	They consider protecting the sensitivities of minorities and women an important value, one much higher than the value of freedom of speech.
	These people do not actually share your values, just in certain instances, the outcomes you desire overlap.
	But in other instances, such as this one, the values are in direct contradiction of one another, and one value must win out on the other.
	And I'm sorry, but free speech must win out over protecting sensitivities.
	So next, a checked and balanced government.
	Okay, well, I'm going to use the judiciary instead, and I realise they're independent, but it's still something that governs the lives of the people who have to live in the system.
	And I don't think that politicising the judiciary with progressivism is a good idea.
	By the time Britain's most senior judges break for summer at the end of July, the old establishment may well have passed a watershed.
	Women may finally have made it to the very top.
	This month, they're interfused for the post of UK's top judge, the president of the Supreme Court.
	Last week, applications for the role of Lord Chief Justice, the head of the judicial system in England, Wales, closed.
	Two other positions in the Supreme Court will soon be vacant.
	Never has there been a better opportunity for radical change.
	The absence of judicial diversity stands out in the senior courts.
	Only if that's what you're looking for.
	Only if you have a progressive lens on, and you're looking around scanning for the number of black people or Asian people in comparison to white people.
	And I don't know about everyone else, but I actually think that not judging people on the basis of their race and determining a part of their worth as to include their racial heritage is a healthier way to operate a society and will end up, at the end, with less racism than if you were to take race as a factor.
	For example, a few hundred years ago, there was a lot of bigotry against left-handed people.
	But now nobody does that because it's not something that's important to them.
	It will end up ending that prejudice because it's just not something people hold in their heads.
	That's how you actually do it.
	The actual manifestation of the end of racism is where people simply aren't taking the race as a factor.
	Like they're not taking left or right-handed as a factor when I go for a job.
	Although it has improved in the lower courts, wherever judges are largely drawn from the bar, they tend to be white and male.
	Yeah, but do they tend to be qualified?
	Until the narrow and rigid definition of what makes a good judge and who judges it is reconsidered at every level, there will never be enough diversity in the pipeline to ensure that the topmost court reflects the makeup of the country.
	Okay, as long as they're following the law and making rational judgments from the evidence presented, I don't care.
	I don't need a prescripted number of non-white people on the board, in the same way that I wouldn't need a prescripted number of white people.
	In a liberal system that operated under the principles of freedom, you would expect to see different outcomes in different areas.
	The fact that a woman judge can get there is proof that it's not barriers to a barrier to women judges.
	And if more women go into it, fine.
	As long as the system is operating as it should be, I don't care who does what.
	And I think that people should have the freedom to choose to do what they want.
	Follow their own natural inclinations, and maybe hopefully be happy.
	But that's not what they want.
	They want to see a parity.
	They want to enforce this at the expense of people being able to choose.
	Seriously though, that progressives aren't anti-freedom is just the most self-evident thing about them.
	Look at the spirit behind the intentions of these two different events this week.
	So Stephen Fry faces a blasphemy probe after making comments about God.
	No, not in Pakistan, in Ireland.
	So police in the Republic of Ireland have launched an investigation after one viewer claimed comments made by Stephen Fry on TV were blasphemous.
	And this was under a law that was brought in in 2009.
	And I know that there are going to be lots of progressives who say yes, well, progressives don't want blasphemy laws.
	It's like, no, but you want something that operates in a functionally identical way.
	I think the funny thing about this though is that the viewers said they weren't even offended.
	But now there is a police investigation anyway.
	But the law prohibits people from publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relations to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion.
	If the intent of this was based on race instead of religion, you would end up with this.
	Toronto Arts Gallery cancels show after concerns artist bastardises indigenous art.
	Outrage over a Toronto artist borrowing from the style of an acclaimed indigenous painter has prompted a gallery to cancel its plans for an upcoming exhibit.
	They were going to show this woman's painting, but she was the wrong race.
	And so they've cancelled it because someone of that race is complaining.
	Is that an enlightenment value, is it?
	Restricting someone's artistic expression on the grounds that they were born the wrong race.
	What she's doing is essentially cultural genocide.
	This guy got this woman's art exhibit shut down over the claims she is committing cultural genocide.
	Let that sink in.
	And I think there's every chance that she was a progressive herself as she was studying to become a visual arts teacher and taking native studies.
	I just tried to learn all I could about the Aboriginal culture, their teachings, their stories, and I've tried to capture the beauty of the arts done and make it my own by drawing upon elements of nature within Canada that have meaning to me.
	Oh yeah, that sounds like a proper cultural genocide.
	Honestly, this Jay Saw guy sounds like a bit of a race realist.
	Oh, no, no, no, you can't replicate our culture because you're not the same race as us.
	We're looking at cultural protectionism here.
	This is dumb.
	This is stupid and there's no reason to shut down her fucking art exhibit.
	She drew the thing, she did the work, it's her art.
	Let her fucking exhibit it if the museum wants.
	If there are people who are offended by this, they don't have to go.
	And again, I hate the hypocrisy of it, because this guy has been borrowing from Western culture to make his own art.
	The impetus behind both of these events was people's hurt feelings.
	And in the case of Stephen Fry, not even people's hurt feelings, but the potential for people to have hurt feelings.
	That's not an acceptable thing to take action against someone over.
	And I don't want people to think that I think that it's only progressives doing this.
	I mean, the FCC investigating Stephen Colbert's Trump rant, it's pathetic.
	It is absolutely pathetic.
	Colbert's controversial joke around the president drew the attention of the Federal Communications Commission.
	The agency received a number of complaints about Colbert's commentary earlier in the week.
	So the FCC chairman promised to take the appropriate action, following a comprehensive investigation of Colbert's remarks.
	Thought America was all about free speech.
	The FCC's response will depend on whether Colbert's remarks are considered obscene.
	I honestly despise using such subjective criteria as people's feelings and they felt it was obscene.
	And one of the reasons I hate it is because on the other side of this issue are people who don't think it's obscene and don't think any action needs to be taken.
	And I'm one of those people and I'm never represented in these discussions.
	Listen to how seriously they are taking this joke.
	We are going to take the facts that we find and we are going to apply the law as set out by the Supreme Court and other courts and we'll take the appropriate action.
	Okay, he called Trump's mouth Vladimir Putin's cockholster.
	Go nuts.
	Was that obscene?
	Are people offended?
	Is it something you should take action over?
	Do you really want to dignify that with a response?
	The agency's website states that content must meet a three-tier Supreme Court test to be labelled as obscene.
	What are we trying to get some sort of objective measurement of what's obscene, are we?
	It must appeal to an average person's prurient interest, depict or describe sexual conduct in a patently offensive way.
	Very objective.
	That'll be an easy standard to actively assess, won't it?
	Or taken as a whole like serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value?
	Well, again, he called his mouth Putin's cockholster.
	You tell me!
	That's...
	It's fucking dumb!
	What are you doing?
	So going back to the Enlightenment values that you and I both value, Will, I see them most under attack by progressives, and I think that it's the progressive attack on these values that has in part driven the rise of the right.
	And now the right are exercising their power against them as well.
	The problem is the progressive values, because to progressives, the outcome is the value.
	But to liberals, the opportunity is the value.
	And making sure people have equal opportunity rather than equal outcome is the spirit of Enlightenment values and the antithesis of progressive values.
	But I like this paragraph here.
	Corbyn must be persuaded to promise that in the event of the likely crushing defeat, he will stand down after the election, offering Labour MPs some chance of saving themselves and their party.
	It is improbable, maybe Labour will be so broken that a new party, with roots in the best of the British working class and committed to Enlightenment values that unite the best of our political traditions, will be started with a clean slate.
	That is a good idea.
	But the first thing that has to be identified is where Labour went wrong.
	Progressive values are not Enlightenment values.
	This is why progressives are happy to violate Enlightenment values when it is convenient for them, because the value of equality of outcome is more important to them than the individual rights and freedoms of every single person.
	This cannot be a common bedfellow for a liberal movement.

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