Mark Steyn on the necessity of defying cancel culture.
A good little article. I also like the fact that he got in a dig at the now-officially-pathetic National Review:
In my deposition by global warm-monger Michael E Mann's lawyer, I contrasted the behavior of my two publishers in important free speech cases north and south of the border - Maclean's and National Review. Maclean's was the classic dentist's-waiting-room magazine, the Canadian equivalent of Time, super-mainstream, non-ideological; National Review, by contrast, a conservative institution on an ideological mission. Yet it was Maclean's and their owners, Ted Rogers and his heirs, who stood absolutely firm on the principle of free speech, while the shifty little weasels of National Review retreated into ever narrower legalistic arguments ever further away from any principle.
8 comments:
Yeah, they hosed him. I took some sh...stuff at DPUD for noticing that.
Betwen that and firing Derbyshire I knew NRO had no desire to fight for free speech.
NRO was a pioneer in cancel culture.
Derb was one of the first folks cancelled for unapproved thoughts, voicing them actually.
I was not a Derbyshire fan, but I believe he was treated shabbily by National Review, and his termination was, indeed, an indication that NR was starting to see freedom of expression as a potential threat to its grift.
I liked his columns. I almost always learned something. Something interesting too.
There aren't many people I can say that about.
We outsiders (like Derb and Steyn) have naively assumed that the USA is the home of free speech and individualism. Meanwhile the enormous power of Wilsonian Progressivism and its enabling class of northeastern (US) elites was invisible to us since JFK - I mean his folks are Irish Catholic right? ...and Obama, Biden and so on. It looked like the old WASP aristocracy had been broken and individual merit ruled.
But what Derb calls 'cultural Marxism' is a perfect fit with the old Progressive agenda, way before the 1960s, right back to social reformers of the 19th century. Even if a ruling class has no WASP leaders, it can still be dominated by the old WASP ideology - the rules you have to follow to rise in status among urban elites - which have now been globalised.
It's just too easy to blame the 1960s, and won't solve the problem. In a way this goes back to the English Civil War and Cromwell, who killed the King, right? Because to him and his descendants, abstract principles trump whacky old traditions - just like the current Wokesters believe now.
I actually wrote to Derb and tried to explain all this to him, haha! He sent a polite reply but that was all. But there are some good young scholars in the US who are looking at aspects of this as a classic social *class* problem. Here's one on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/OrangePartisan/status/1392736149802717187
I said individual merit and then listed Biden, oh dear, what was I thinking? Anyway I hope you get the gist of my argument that this is about social class and a dominant set of rules to mark status.
Of course once the rules are set, some crafty folks can use them creatively in all sorts of ways!
Michael Lind says that all the new Woke terms are passwords to gain entry to the elite, and they have to keep changing the passwords because so many contenders:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-national-american-elite
And what could be more WASP than NR?
Now I get why Woody Allen talked about NR in Annie Hall as if it was 'Der Sturmer' or something. The WASPs had been keeping Woody and his folks out of the country club for generations, and things had only just begun to change - or did they? I say no, WASP ideology stills rules and has gone global.
Mark Steyn is always worth a read. I will never pass up an article by him or by Victor Davis Hanson.
Bruce, I believe the old WASP regime was broken by the advent of Camelot and the Kennedys. Since then, it's been a building coalition of Marxist "tikkun olam" Jews, Silicon Valley billionaire technocrats (with the help of the Hollywhores), and D.C. globalist apparatchiks, none of whom believe in anything bigger than themselves.
Read Michael Lind's article Rebecca. It's long but worth it.
This is much bigger, and has been going for much longer than a handful of postwar (even tikkun olam) radicals and liberals can account for. It's deep down, centuries old. The Soviets tried to change Russia, but now the old Orthodox Russia is back as if the Soviet era never happened! Brainwashing on such a scale just doesn't work, unless it connects with something innate.
Conservative Catholics never believed in any of this stuff. The Kennedys had to adopt WASP beliefs to be accepted - the ideology was more powerful than the people, because it defined status. WASPism killed the Kennedys (!) and not the other way around, sorry.
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