Biased Reporting, Hypocritical ‘Educators’

A 3/5/23 Washington Post news story, Florida bills would ban gender studies, limit trans pronouns, erode tenure, is a case study on biased reporting and hypocritical educators. The article by Hannah Natanson, Lori Rozsa and Susan Svrluga, opens with, 

Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program.

Note my highlighted portion. Sex is an observed biological fact. It is not “assigned” by anyone. Calling it “assigned” is Woke unreason, not objective reporting. An objective reporter would fact-check the idea that sex is assigned by anyone, and immediately conclude the falsity of the idea, based on the evidence. Of course, unpleasant facts are, well, unpleasant. That’s why there is a move in the journalism field to abandon objectivity altogether, on grounds that it is “a distortion of reality” and even racist—if you can believe it. Rather than accept the truth, even if uncomfortable, why not abandon objective truth and create your own truth to fit your narrative? This is a manifestation of what Ayn Rand identified as the primacy of consciousness, which is the opposite of what objective journalism is based on, the primacy of existence.

Teachers peddling this line—that sex is assigned, rather than observed, at birth—are guilty of gross educational malpractice. The observational biological facts are plain, and it is these facts, not choice or whim, that determines gender. Telling children that gender is a mere arbitrary designation, or “assignment”—at birth or at any time—is to undermine the ability of children to distinguish between what’s real and what’s only in her mind. This is the path to destroying the child’s rational faculty before it is even fully developed. It is a crime. It is monstrous.

Getting back to the Florida legislation, Rozsa and Svrluga write:

Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, warned that the legislation — especially the bill that would prevent students from majoring in certain topics — threatens to undermine academic freedom.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy,” Mulvey said. “It silences debate, stifles ideas and limits the autonomy of educational institutions which … made American higher education the envy of the world.”

On this issue, I posted this comment, edited for clarity:

Mulvey whines that “the legislation . . . threatens to undermine academic freedom.”  Is he joking? Aren’t these the same schools that happily soak in torrents of government money? Well, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. Mulvey apparently wants to have his government money, and eat it, too. If the Professors want a free reign, then don’t take government money. Otherwise, accept that you are accountable to the legislature, the taxpayers’ representatives.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy” is an even bigger joke. In fact, that is precisely what democracy is—electoral majority rule, with the emphasis on RULE. Apparently, Mulvey wants to have his democracy, and eat it, too. Well, it doesn’t work that way. In a democracy, your freedom is subject to majority rule—or, as Biden put it, “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” Indeed. If the elected legislature, the voters’ representatives, tells you how and what to teach, that’s it. You do it. Is the right to vote the right from which academic freedom flows—or not? The right to vote is primary, according to democracy. Like it or not, that’s democracy. Contrary to Mulvey, The state telling you what you can and cannot learn is perfectly consistent with democracy. Why should only educators decide what to teach? Majority rules, right?

People need to realize that government funding is tyranny. Fundamentally, it’s as simple as that. When funding is obtained voluntarily from willing consumers, educators can decide, and consumers can accept or go elsewhere. The state has no role, except to police the market for force and fraud. True academic freedom is the separation of education and state, under a constitutional republic with a democratic process of limited powers. In other words, the original American system, a free society based on unalienable individual rights, from which everything else, including the right to vote, flows. 

Related Reading:

Washington Budget Debacle Highlights Extent of Our Dependence on Government

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

How About: Hands Off Our Money and Our Choice?

Bad Schools and What to Do about Them, with Andrew Bernstein, author of Why Johnny Still Can't Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It by Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard

What the Nazis Borrowed from Marx by Ludwig von Mises in Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

DeSantis Reminds Public Universities of Uncomfortable Truth About ‘He Who Pays the Piper’: Public universities are complaining about Ron DeSantis's latest move. But do they have any right to object? By Lawrence W. Reed

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 3, Epistemology]

Recently, I posted an answer to the Quora* question, How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?, which is also available on my 1/14/21 blog post. I followed that up by posting a reply to Pascal Morimacil’s answer, available on my blog post of 2/3/21. I then had a conversation with Morimacil. Before I get to that, Morimacil’s answer is reposted here in full:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

---

You could analyze a mugging that way, and declare it to be a win-win wealth creating situation.

The victim is paying for the right to exist, and the mugger lets them exist without shooting them. Win-win. If the victim thinks the price is too high, they can just decide not to pay.

---

You kind of have to ignore the gun, or the threat of eviction

And if you also ignore a lot of other things, like pollution and so on, and rising wealth inequality, well, at some point you are just deciding that money changing hands means things are getting better for everyone.

You can read my reply here, also posted to my blog on 2/3/21. A back-and-forth ensued with Morimacil, which I will post in stages by subject. The subjects are economic, epistemological, and political philosophy. We started with the economic aspect, specifically Morimacil’s landlord/mugger analogy. My economic exchange (Part 1) is posted on 3/8/21. Part 2 is my exchange on political philosophy, specifically Capitalism, posted on 3/11/21. The most important part of my exchange is on epistemology. It’s most important because it informs and influences a person’s beliefs on economic and political philosophy and other areas. This is true of Pascal Morimacil, as we can see in this exchange. On epistemology, Morimacil answered:

The basic idea is that if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else, then it kinda seems like both people are better off, since they agree to the trade.

So for example, you pay rent for the right to exist somewhere, and then someone else lets you exist without evicting you. It’s said to be win-win. So, a creation of wealth.

There is no “if you consider every transaction individually, without looking at anything else”: The only way to analyze economics (or any aspect of human affairs) is to begin with the individual, since the individual is the only human entity that exists. The “economy” is an abstraction, subsuming all relevant individual transactions. All other considerations are derivative from individualism. 

The mugging victim is not “paying” for the “right to exist”; i.e., the right to life. The right to life means only the right of self-ownership and self-governance; i.e., to think and act on one’s own judgement, in pursuit of one’s values, by peaceful respectful means: The right to life does not mean the “right” to force others to provide the means of living (“existing” in your terminology). The right to life, like the right to one’s property, is an inalienable right, held equally by everyone--and that includes the right not to be anyone’s slave. The renter is not paying for his “right to exist.” He is paying for the right to a particular housing unit, derived from the mutually agreed obligation to pay rent to use the landlord’s property. The renter’s non-payment forfeits his right to the housing unit. Being evicted does not forfeit his right to exist, or to his life. 

Morimacil replied:

So first, the idea that the individual is the only thing that exists is entirely wrong, very clearly, human exist as a species, not a single individual. [sic]

I responded:

“Species” is not an existent. It is a concept. Concepts are mental abstractions denoting existents in reality that share certain characteristics. What exists in reality are individual human beings. No matter how hard you try, you will not find the entity “species” in reality. You will only see individual human beings, even though intellectually we know that each of us fits the definition of the abstract concept, the species “man”. Concepts are vital mental tools that aid humans in accumulating knowledge and understanding the world. But they are not real concretes.

You need to know the difference between what’s real and what’s in your head. Then you would be able to see that the value a landlord offers is a real housing unit. That’s why the landlord’s alleged “victim” wants it; he values it. Housing doesn’t magically pop up, causelessly, in nature. The landlord’s so-called “passive” income consists of building and/or maintaining the housing unit. You would be able to see that the “victim” in your story is just a moocher who wants something for nothing. Marx’s mean economic fantasies and psychological machinations notwithstanding, the world doesn’t owe anyone an effortless existence at others’ expense. If you want someone to provide you with good housing (or any value), you should pay for it, as any honorable person understands.

Morimacil replied:

If you want to go that way, we could declare that individual human beings are an abstraction, and actually there are just a bunch of cells.

Still, multiple humans exist, and communities exist, and sexual reproduction exists, and so on.

My unposted response:

You could “declare” anything. But reality doesn’t bend to whim. Facts matter. I’m stating observable facts of reality that others can validate independently. Individual cells are observable through a microscope. You can take your eye off of the microscope and look in the mirror and observe a full human being. But that’s it. There is nothing beyond the individual. You can observe a large group of individuals and call it a “community”. You can observe similarities among individuals and call it a “species”. But you cannot direct your attention away from the individual and directly observe, through the senses, the community or the species like you can when you shift attention from cells to the individual because “community” and “species” have no direct referent in reality. 

Individual human beings are the only human entity that exists. Why is this so important that I am focussed on it? Because the idea that individuals are mere cells that make up a higher organism is substituting an abstraction for reality. That devastating inversion is responsible for massive injustice, suffering, and death. Just as defective human cells—an infected appendix or gallbladder, or a cancerous tumor—can be cut out for the good of the whole organism, so the application of the idea that human lives are “just a bunch of cells” makes them expendable for the sake of the higher organism which they compose. Tyrants have seized on this inverted epistemology to as if human lives are mere cells, so any number of them can be enslaved, liquidated, and killed for the good of the organism—“society,” the “race,” the “proletariat,” or the “community.” Collectivist regimes operate on this premise, and offer vivid evidence for the consequences of this mental inversion. They can conveniently take their attention off of the individual, in order to justify the sacrificing of countless real live human beings for the “greater good” of imaginary, unobservable “entities”—in Fascist Italy, National Socialist (NAZI) Germany, Communist Russia and Communist China, and with less severity in modern welfare states. Society, the race, the community, the economic group, the species are all abstractions that represent associations of individuals, not entities. But actual human beings paid the price, in their loss of liberty, property, and lives, for elevating these abstractions above people. You’ve validated my point: You need to know the difference between what’s real and what’s in your head. The terrible consequences of evading the difference can be seen all around us, in small and large ways.

Morimacil’s believe in collectivism--that “human[s] exist as a species, not a single individual”--leads to his utter disregard for individual rights, trade, and ignoring of the facts of the landlord/renter relationship. The “right to exist” means the right to exist at others’ nonconsensual expense. Why not? We’re all one species. We’re not individuals. We’re cells in the higher organism. I agree with Craig Biddle and Yaron Brook: The basic battle for a free capitalist society is individualism versus collectivism.  

Related Reading:

QUORA: ‘How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?’

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?' -- The Mugger vs the Landlord

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 2, Political Philosophy]

QUORA: 'How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game -- Answers and Replies [Part 1, Economics]

Related Viewing:

Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook

‘Monkey Up’ a ‘Racist’ Phrase? Only to the Racist Left

When Ron DeSantis won the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, he said,

The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases bankrupting the state. That is not going to work. [my emphasis]

DeSantis was referring to the socialistic policies of his Democratic counterpart, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Dennis Prager, quoting from the South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, reported

"Gillum is an unabashed champion of his party's most progressive ideas -- including things like Medicare-for-all single payer health system, abolishing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and impeaching President Donald Trump." 

Gillum is part of the far Left self-described socialist wing of the Democratic Party, it seems accurate to say. Well, Gillum’s supporters jumped all over DeSantis for his remarks critical of his policies. “Monkey up,” it turns out, is a “racist dog whistle” according to the far Left. 

Really?

I’ve heard the term used from time to time all of my life. Someone’s “race”—that is, skin color—never entered my mind. But I thought, maybe I’m missing something. So I looked it up. 

The Free Dictionary defines “monkey up” as “To hack together hardware for a particular task, especially a one-shot job. Connotes an extremely crufty and consciously temporary solution. Compare hack up, kluge up.”

The Urban Dictionary’s Top Definition defines “monkey up” as 

Mess something up. Probably influenced by similar phrases like "monkey around with," "monkey business," and "throw a monkey wrench into." Possibly used as a euphemism for "muck up" by people who consider that already-euphemistic phrase too similar to "fuck up."

There are many ways the word monkey is used as an idiom, including “monkey bars.” Mirriam-Webster, my favorite go-to dictionary, doesn’t list the term “monkey up.” It does have “to make a monkey out of,” which means “to cause (someone) to look very foolish : to make a fool out of (someone).” Netflix even has a movie titled Monkey Up, about a talking monkey. Clearly, few people equate black people with monkeys.

As Prager reports, many of the Leftist accusers claim that historically, blacks have often been equated to monkeys:

The NAACP Florida State conference said that "apes" and "monkey" are "by far the best-known racist references to African-Americans in our national folklore. It's only equal in racial semantics to the 'N-word.'" 

Perhaps. But everywhere I looked, definitions and the way people use the term “monkey up” today conforms to the definitions stated above. It’s clear how DeSantis meant it. He was referring to economic policies that he believes are harmful to people’s economic well-being. Everyone knows what “monkey up” means. It means to “mess up.” More crudely, it’s a polite way of saying “fuck up.” Leftists are good at it. They fuck up the language to evade the responsibity of actually evaluating and rebutting their political opponents’ ideas and opinions objectively.

The accusations are definitely political. But is there some deeper psychological motive involved, at least for some? The Urban Dictionary has an interesting follow up that sheds clarifying light on the Left’s accusations:

The phrase does not have any racial implications, though some have called it a "racist dog-whistle" referring to black people. The dog-whistle metaphor is apt because only a racist who secretly equates monkeys with black people would hear this phrase as having a racial dimension.

This definitely fits the modern New Left. It’s entire agenda is collectivist, largely centered around skin color. Who’s the racist? DeSantis, who used the term innocently? Or his collectivist “dog whistle” accusers on the Left, who see everything through group identity, from gender to sexual orientation to age . . . and to melanin levels (skin color)? The answer is obvious.

Related Reading:

Identity Politics: America’s ‘Pre-Existing Condition’, and the Cure

The Founding Fathers, Not ‘Diversity,’ is the Solution to ‘Our Racialized Society’

How Identity Politics Is Made to Destroy Us By David Horowitz

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Collectivism vs. Individualism in Letters

The ‘Alt-Right’: The New Left’s Chickens Homecoming.

Fellow Republicans, Don't Sell Your Souls for Bannon and the Alt-Right  By Walter Hudson

QUORA: ‘Do you believe in free market capitalism?’

QUORA *: ‘Do you believe in free market capitalism?’

I posted this answer:

I do believe in free market, or laissez-faire, capitalism. My belief is not in the nature of a religious faith, but as a reasoned position drawn from the observable facts of human beings’ nature and life requirements. 

The basic attribute that separates man from other animals is reason. Reason is man’s basic means of survival. Reason is an attribute of the individual. I believe, therefore, that every individual must be free to live and associate with others based on his own judgement without coercive interference from others--including others in their capacity as government officials. Put another way, I believe that every individual possesses the inalienable individual rights to life, to liberty rights, including rights to property earned by work and free trade, and to the personal pursuit of one’s own values, goals, and happiness. Rights are principles that sanction the individual’s freedom of action, as well as the limits of those actions, in a social context; the limit being the same rights of others. 

The government—acting as the people’s agent, rather than ruler—ensures peaceful coexistence through laws designed for the sole purpose of securing everyone’s individual rights equally and at all times. To “secure these rights” means to protect against aggressive, or initiatory, force; i.e., to establish freedom from force by law. Since man’s survival and flourishing requires thoughtful long-range action on the individual level, his number one social requirement is to be free from the only action others can use to stop him--physical force. A government that is limited to banishing aggressive physical force from social relationships is the only type of government under which capitalism can exist.

As a matter of principle and political philosophy, capitalism is the only social system to secure voluntary consent to mutual advantage based on equality of individual rights as the only basis for dealing with others. This, I believe, makes free market capitalism the only moral social system. Therefore, based on my morals and the laws of nature, I believe in free market, or laissez-faire, capitalism.

Related Reading:

Why Capitalism is Selfish--and Why That’s Good

QUORA *: ‘Is Ayn Rand wrong about altruism?’

QUORA: Is Ayn Rand's 'Selfishness' 'the middle between altruism and selfism?'

Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness

Capitalism and the Moral High Ground by Craig Biddle

Why Capitalism Needs a Moral Sanction

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein

* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:

Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]

[You can also reply to other users’ answers.] 

‘Climate Emergency’: A Nonsensical, and Dangerous, Misuse of Words

In a 4/15/20 letter published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, Linda DePay writes, in part:

As the April 8 editorial (“Trump’s blindness on COVID-19 echoes his failure on climate”) made clear, leaders who fail to understand or value scientific evidence endanger us all. 

In confronting the current pandemic, let’s remember that we have an even more serious problem to address. As the 50th anniversary of Earth Day draws near (April 22), young people are telling us that we are in a climate emergency. [My emphasis]

This is an emerging theme. But the very idea of equating the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change is not only wrong. It is senseless gibberish on its face. We need to understand the value of words, let alone science. “Climate emergency” is logically an utterly useless term.  “Climate” and “emergency” are two terms that are about as far apart linguistically as any two words can be. “Climate” is an averaging out over a period of years and decades of weather measurements such as precipitation, temperature, and wind. “Emergency” is a sudden, unforeseen, and short term event or set of circumstances requiring immediate action. Since climate is an abstract average spanning years, it fits no part of the definition of an emergency.

But “climate emergency” is useful as a package deal for people with a cause who want to put something over an unsuspecting public. It suits the Environmentalist movement  because Environmentalists are at war with human impact on the planet, and want to minimize human improvement of nature as quickly as possible regardless of the impact on human well-being. And it suits democratic socialists because it aids in advancing their criminal socialist agenda.

“We need immediate action, so we need emergency powers to fight climate change and economic inequality and social injustice, et al, your freedom notwithstanding!” The COVID-19 pandemic is a real emergency. Some temporary restrictions on our freedom is understandable, although the nature of the restrictions that are warranted is certainly debatable. But “climate emergence” implies indefinite--read permanent--individual rights restrictions, because assessing climate change is a decades long process.

Yes, some young people are telling us there is a climate emergency. Young people were also told there is a Santa Claus, an Easter Bunny, and a Tooth Fairy. And who is infecting them with the term “climate emergency?” Adults who want to exploit young people in order to push a political or Environmentalist agenda--certainly not people with reverence for the value of scientific evidence.

When you hear the term “climate emergency,” you've entered useful idiot territory. A “useful idiot” is defined by Mirriam-Webster as “a naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda.” The useful idiots among us need to wake up and think. They are victims of the intellectuals who concocted the “climate emergency” (or “climate crisis”). These intellectuals are endangering us all, both in terms of our individual liberty and in our ability to make the natural world safer and more conducive to human flourishing.

Related Reading:

As We Endure Through COVID-19, Dems Gear Up for‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism

Did Trump’s Defense Production Act Invocation Clear the Way for the Democrats’ ‘Climate Crisis’ Authoritarianism?

‘Climate Crisis’: The Dem’s Path to Totalitarian Socialism

The Crisis of Socialism--Stephen R. Hicks

The Democrats’ Fascist Fangs Exposed in Crusade Against ‘Catastrophic’ Climate Change

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels—Alex Epstein

The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the 21st Century—Ronald Bailey