Rebuttal to a conservative critique of Peterson

Stop press: Facebook has just blocked Peterson from posting

David Marcus below makes some criticisms that I should probably leave for Peterson himself to answer but Peterson is a very busy man so maybe it might be useful for me to say a few words on the matter. 

Where Marcus is tendentious is that he is quite uncritical of the common Leftist claim that American blacks have been damaged by their history of slavery.  It allegedly takes away from blacks any responsibility for any disadvantage they may have and demonizes "whitey".

The claim has often been systematically debunked over the years so I will make only some desultory remarks about it.  The basic claim is that blacks have been demoralized and cowed by their history. They lack the will to fight an oppressive system.  But there is a large psychological research literature on self esteem and all the studies of black self-esteem show it to be very high.  They are TOO self-confident if anything.  They are NOT psychologically oppressed.

At this point I could perhaps mention that I myself am descended from two people who were transported across the ocean chained up in the holds of rickety wooden ships. They were convicts transported from Britain to help found the colony that later became Australia.  They were used as slave labour to do the work of setting up the new colony.  So are their descendents crippled psychologically by their origins?  Far from it.  To have convict ancestry these days in Australia is in fact rather prestigious.  Claims about damage passed down from how our ancestors were treated are founded on speculation rather than real life.

Secondly, blacks were in many ways better off in the near aftermath of slavery than they are now.  In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most black children grew up in mother & father families and the husband had a job that supported them.  That is not remotely so now.  So if slavery created irresponsible and feckless attitudes, they were not transmitted.   The psychological chain between slavery and now was broken long ago.

Thirdly, when do we allow changed circumstances to have any effect?  Affirmative action has been around for decades now has made blacks privileged rather than discriminated against.  Should that not have lifted them up?  There is little sign of it.  So that too undermines discrimination as a cause of black disadvantage. 

And fourthly, we have to live in the world we have got. And in that world just about all have the opportunity to make of ourselves what we can.  The key to economic and social success is undoubtedly education and education to High School standard is provided for all.  If you wreck your educational chances by being disruptive or dropping out, you will have a very low-quality life regardless of your skin colour.

But black schools are dreck, someone might say.  They are.  You are not going to get much of an education if you do just about anything rather than sit and listen to the teacher.  As it happens, the children of Chinese migrants often go to the same schools.  They learn and do well.  They think their schools are dreck too but they just keep their heads down and study their books.

So you do largely create your own privilege.  There is of course some unearned privilege.  Inheriting a lot of money can open many doors.  But such privilege may be a lot less than it seems. The heirs of John D. Rockefeller have not all had happy lives despite the vast riches that John D. left when he died.

And the silliest claim of inborn privilege is "white privilege".  Tell that to the white guy in the trailer park who has trouble with paying his utility bills and has to put up with feral neighbors close by.  Where is his privilege? Whites who seem privileged will mostly be that way because they seized the privilege of working hard first at their studies and then at a productive job.

And let me point out that white privilege is a Nazi concept. It is as race-obsessed as Hitler was.  Hitler thought that there was an unfairly privileged race in Germany, the Jews. They  sat at the top of every pyramid in Germany.  They were not only prominent in politics but were also the bankers, businessmen, professionals and artists.  That seemed wrong to Hitler, just as white privilege seems wrong to American Leftists.  Hitler did not at all consider that prominent Jews earned their privilege by spending a long time in the educational system and then  working hard subsequently. So racial theories of privilege are clearly evil, whether it is Jews or whites who are the hate-object.

But what about white privilege in encounters with the cops?  The privilege is great but it is again earned.  I have had several encounters with traffic police during which I was calm, polite  and co-operative. On all occasions the politeness was returned and I was shortly thereafter back on my way. Most whites are like that. 

With blacks, however, it can be very different.  Blacks often abuse the police, may fight or shoot at the police and make strenuous efforts to evade arrest, including running from the police.  Police don't like that. Their very safety is at risk.  So they approach blacks on hairtrigger alert. They would be mad to do otherwise.  And in those circumstances some possibly innocent move by a black can be misinterpreted and the trigger will be pulled -- killing a possibly innocent man. That is inherited privilege too -- negative privilege. 

And I can't see any cure for it.  Police have to be expert at judging risks but even so they will sometimes get it wrong.  And, with the help of Mr Obama, black attitudes to the police seem to have worsened rather than improved in recent times.  There is no way that is going to end well.


Dr. Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has been gaining celebrity. He first emerged in refusing to accept his university’s dictate to use transgendered students’ preferred pronouns and a broader fight against Canadian legislation to demand such usage. Since then, in a series of wildly popular YouTube videos ranging from studies of the Bible to anti-postmodernist lectures, his star has risen. This year, his book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” came out and is selling well.

Towards the end of a recent lecture, Peterson tackled the issue of white privilege. The 10-minute segment went viral, praised by many as refutation of the idea that white privilege even exists. Frankly, it was not his best work. It’s a bit sloppy on the concept itself, and utterly failed to take into account the broad context of racial issues that led to the idea in the first place.

It’s useful to look at what Peterson gets wrong here, and what he gets right. He is venturing into very dangerous territory with a cavalier attitude, and this could undermine the important counter-cultural ideas he is using to challenge, not just the academy, but our culture at large.

What Jordan Peterson Gets Wrong

Peterson’s main argument against white privilege is that race is but one of many possibly infinite differentials in human beings that may accrue benefits. He cites attractiveness and intelligence as two examples that could give individuals unearned advantages. But in the American context (Peterson is Canadian) these are somewhat strange comparisons. This is because ugly, dumb people were not subjected to centuries of slavery and a further century of debilitating Jim Crow laws.

History doesn’t begin in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, or in 2009 when Barack Obama became president. While smarts and looks are unfair gifts of natural selection, the advantages of being white in America are a manmade phenomenon based on centuries of bigotry and irrational bias. To compare these things is facile and badly misses the point.

Peterson makes things worse with a bizarre analogy between American and Chinese culture. He claims that white privilege is really “majority privilege.” Tackling the classic examples of white people being more represented in media and education, less suspected of potential theft in stores, and having freer options in housing, among others, he says:

Is that white privilege, or is that, like majority privilege? Is the same true if you go to China, you’re Chinese, is the same true if you’re Chinese? Is it majority privilege, and if its majority privilege, isn’t that just part of living within your culture? So let’s say you live in your culture, you’re privileged in that culture, well obviously. That’s what the culture is for. That’s what it’s for. Why would you bother building the d-mn thing if it didn’t accrue benefits to you? Well, you might say one of the consequences is that it accrues fewer benefits to those who aren’t in the culture. Yeah, but you can’t immediately associate that with race.

In the United States of America we can absolutely, without question, associate that with race. This is because black people have been here since well before the American founding. There is no American culture that doesn’t involve black people. They were not interlopers in some society built by whites. They literally built the White House. They picked the cotton and tobacco, they were the unpaid economic engine that made America great, and they were infamously mistreated for centuries. It is a cringe-worthy moment, and one can’t help but feel that Peterson hasn’t thought it the whole way through.

What He Gets Right

Although he doesn’t quite manage to say it, what Peterson is rightfully rejecting is not the idea that white people in America have privilege. In fact, above he confirms it. He is arguing that, as a pedagogical tool, this fact is extremely limited and potentially dangerous. He is rejecting the idea that white people today have a reason to feel guilty about their skin color, and the idea that accepting such guilt will lead to some kind of good end.

Furthermore, he rightfully criticizes the lack of serious scholarship surrounding privilege theory. It is a concept almost always backed up anecdotally and rarely subjected to serious empirical investigation. When it is, the evidence of bias is often sketchy at best. But once we admit, as Peterson does, that white people do accrue unearned advantages, either by science or storytelling we have a responsibility to examine this and try to make sure that people are not subject to denigrating treatment based on their skin color.

We Need Peterson to Be Careful

Peterson is an enormously important, even vital voice in an academic, governmental, and media environment that often seeks to crush dissenting voices. In his book, “The War Against Free Speech,” he says the following about his refusal to be compelled to use certain pronouns: “Many of the doctrines that underlie the legislation that I’ve been objecting to share structural similarities with the Marxist ideas that drove Soviet Communism. The thing I object to the most was the insistence that people use these made up words like ‘xe’ and ‘xer’ that are the construction of authoritarians. There isn’t a hope in h-ll that I’m going to use their language, because I know where that leads.”

This is a message that needs to be heard. And it is important to understand that Peterson is not trying to convince postmodern progressives to change their ways, a task Sisyphus would look at and say, “Boy, I’m glad I don’t have to do that.” His targeted audience is different. Part of it is people who simply shrug at things like compelled speech and wonder why it’s their business. He does a great job of explaining why it is their business and why it is a threat.

Another important target of Peterson’s program is disaffected young men. These are men who feel beaten down by the world and women’s success, the attacks on masculinity. Who feel they are being told their very instincts are toxic. These men are prime targets for the alt-right, the men’s rights movement, and a whole host of antisocial behaviors, because what’s the difference anyway? He tells these young men that they can be men, but that means more than expressing their anger, it means taking responsibility, being productive. Getting in the game.

In trying to reach these young men, Peterson has appeared with some questionable figures. Eyebrows were raised when he was interviewed by the controversial, alleged alt-rightist Stefan Molyneux, for example. If you want to help sinners, you have to go where the sin is, but there is a danger here. Peterson is poised to hit the mainstream, something that would accrue a lot of benefits for those who believe in a freer society. These kinds of appearances and awkward attacks on privilege theory put such mainstream acceptance in jeopardy.

Welcome to the big leagues, Dr. Peterson. The balls are going to come at you fast and hard. You have to judiciously pick and choose which you swing at.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The Coup Against America

The memo has been released, now it's time to release everything

The Democrats and the media spent a week lying to the American people about the "memo."

The memo was full of "classified information" and releasing" it would expose "our spying methods." By "our," they didn't mean American spying methods. They meant Obama's spying methods.

A former White House Ethics Lawyer claimed that the Nunes memo would undermine "national security." On MSNBC, Senator Chris Van Hollen threatened that if the memo is released, the FBI and DOJ "will refuse to share information with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees."

Senator Cory Booker howled that releasing the memo was "treasonous" and might be "revealing sources and methods" and even "endangering fellow Americans in the intelligence community."

The memo isn't treasonous. It reveals a treasonous effort by the Democrats to use our intelligence agencies to rig an election and overturn the will of the voters.

The media spent a week lying to Americans about the dangers of the memo because it didn't want them to find out what was inside. Today, the media and Dems switched from claiming that the memo was full of "classified information" that might get CIA agents killed to insisting that it was a dud and didn't matter. Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.

On Thursday, the narrative was that the memo would devastate our national security and no one should ever be allowed to read it. By Friday, the new narrative was that the memo tells us nothing important and we shouldn't even bother reading it. The lies change, but suppressing the memo remains the goal.

There is no legitimately classified information in the Nunes memo. But it does endanger a number of "Americans" in the "intelligence community" who colluded with the Clinton campaign against America.

It endangers former FBI Director Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the current FBI General Counsel Dana Boente who had previously served as the Acting Attorney General. These men and women had allegedly signed FISA applications that were at best misleading and at worst badly tainted.

The Clinton campaign had enlisted figures in the FBI and the DOJ to manipulate an election. The coup against America operated as a "state within a state" inside the United States government.

"The political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials," the memo informs us. But they did not reveal on the FISA application that their core evidence came from the Clinton campaign. Sources were certainly being protected. But they were Clinton sources.

The memo reveals that without the Steele dossier there would have been no eavesdropping on Carter Page, the Trump associate targeted in this particular case. "Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information." But the FISA application neglected to mention that its primary source had been paid by the Clinton campaign, was unverified and would continue to be unverified.

FBI Director Comey testified that he had told President Trump that the dossier was "unverified." Yet the "unverified" piece of opposition research was used as the basis for a FISA application.

As Rep. Jim Jordan noted, "FBI takes 'salacious and unverified' dossier to secret court to get secret warrant to spy on a fellow American, and FBI doesn't tell the court that the DNC/Clinton campaign paid for that dossier. And they did that FOUR times."

"There's been no evidence of a corrupt evidence to obtain warrants against people in the Trump campaign," Rep. Adam Schiff insisted. That's why he tried to block the release of the evidence.

The evidence was unverified opposition research. Its source had been paid by the Clinton campaign. Not only had Steele been indirectly working for the Clinton campaign (when he wasn't being paid by the FBI), but he made no secret of his own political agenda to stop Trump.

"In September 2016, Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he "was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president," the memo informs us.

That's former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr whose wife was being paid by an organization hired by the Clinton campaign to investigate Trump. Ohr then passed along his wife's opposition research to the FBI. The evidence couldn't be any more corrupt than that.

Steele was passionate about Trump "not being president." So were his handlers who ignored his leaks to the media until he "was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations-an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI." His previous meetings, including the one that allegedly generated the Yahoo News article, were ignored.

Tainted investigations are nothing new. Law enforcement is as fallible as any other profession. But the memo reveals a snapshot of just how many top figures colluded in this corrupted and tainted effort.

What drove them to violate professional ethical norms and legal requirements in the FISA applications?

Top DOJ and FBI officials shared Steele's "passion," and that of his ultimate employer, Hillary Clinton, to stop Donald Trump at all costs. And they're still trying to use the Mueller investigation to overturn the election results in a government coup that makes Watergate look like a children's tea party,

Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is already under investigation. He's suspected of trying to sit on the Wiener emails until the election was over. This alleged failed cover-up triggered the Comey letter which hurt Hillary worse than a timely revelation would have. McCabe's wife had financial links to the Clintons.

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was an Obama holdover who had foolishly tried to use the DOJ to go to war with President Trump. Both Yates and Dana Boente were Obama and Holder choices. During the groundless prosecution of the former Republican governor of Virginia, Boente had declared, "No one is above the law." We'll see if that's true with everyone who signed the FISA applications.

If Boente signed false or misleading FISA applications, he should be removed as FBI General Counsel.

The memo is only the first crack in the wall. But it's grounds for an investigation that will expose the abuses that led to eavesdropping on Trump officials. And the motives of those who perpetuated them.

A Washington Post piece suggested that just releasing the memo alone would allow Mueller to charge President Trump with "obstruction of justice." That's how badly they want to get Trump.

A clear and simple fact emerges from the memo.

Top figures in the DOJ and the FBI, some loyal to Obama and Hillary, abused the FISA process in the hopes of influencing or reversing the results of an election by targeting their political opponents. The tool that they used for the job came from the Clinton campaign. Using America's intelligence services to destroy and defeat a political opponent running for president is the worst possible abuse of power and an unprecedented threat to a democratic system of free open elections.

We have been treated to frequent lectures about the independence of the DOJ and the FBI. But our country isn't based around government institutions that are independent of oversight by elected officials. When unelected officials have more power than elected officials, that's tyranny.

A Justice Department that acts as the Praetorian Guard for a political campaign is committing a coup and engaging in treason. The complex ways that the Steele dossier was laundered from the Clinton campaign to a FISA application is evidence of a conspiracy by both the DOJ and the Clinton campaign.

It's time for us to learn about all the FISA abuses, the list of NSA unmasking requests of Trump officials by Obama officials and the eavesdropping on members of Congress. We deserve to know the truth.

The memo has been released. Now it's time to release everything.

SOURCE

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A tweet from The Donald

Rasmussen just announced that my approval rating jumped to 49%, a far better number than I had in winning the Election, and higher than certain “sacred cows.” Other Trump polls are way up also. So why does the media refuse to write this? Oh well, someday!

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So you thought fish oil was good for you?

The article below reports a meta-analysis so I reproduce the conclusions only

Associations of Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplement Use With Cardiovascular Disease Risks

Theingi Aung et al

Conclusions and Relevance:  This meta-analysis demonstrated that omega-3 fatty acids had no significant association with fatal or nonfatal coronary heart disease or any major vascular events. It provides no support for current recommendations for the use of such supplements in people with a history of coronary heart disease.

JAMA Cardiol. Published online January 31, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2017.5205

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Statins:  Another "no benefit" finding

Association of Baseline Statin Use Among Older Adults Without Clinical Cardiovascular Disease in the SPRINT Trial

Marco D. Huesch





JAMA Intern Med. Published online January 22, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.7844

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Attractive people are more likely to be conservatives -- because they have it 'too easy'?

The basic finding below is a fairly well-established one so I am not going to question it.  It in fact fits in with three other well-established findings. The happiness research shows that your degree of happiness is inborn and largely fixed throughout your life and it also shows that conservatives are reliably happier.  And the third finding is from genetics research and shows that your degree of conservatism is largely inborn. And with the help of political history we can refine the conclusion from happiness research to say that the psychological basis for conservatism is contentment.  Contentment could be regarded as the chronic form of happiness.

So I draw a different but related conclusion from the one below.  I think it fits in best with  existing research to say that attractive people are more content and hence less aggrieved.  It is undoubted that they have an easier time in all sorts of ways so have little to complain about.  And that is the psychological foundation of conservatism: Contentment. 

Leftists on the other hand are characterized by complaint and grievance. They see all sorts of things that are wrong in the world about them and are unhappy about it, sometimes to the point of rage.  And that may be because they have not done well in various ways.  So what we see below is another instance of the generalization that conservatives are the contented people.  It's a great way to be.  And, fortunately it's not only good looking people who are contented. And if you want to be contented but are not, there is a myriad of self-help books which claim to make you more contented

It may be noted that we have here an example of something that every scientist aspires to:  A demonstration that a particular thing is an example of a more general rule.  In this case we see that attractive people are conservative because contented people in general are conservative. There is no need to postulate that attractive people are insensitive, uncaring etc.  We have no evidence of that.

So I think that is the straightforward explanation of the findings below.  But there may be other contributing factors.  It seems to me likely that Leftists on the whole take less care of their appearance, the extreme ones particularly.  Men with scraggly beards and dreadlocks may be quite happy about their appearance but will not generally be seen as attractive. And Leftist women who use little or no  makeup and wear baggy clothes will definitely contrast adversely with a carefully presented conservative lady. So the causal arrow can point backwards, with Leftism leading to unattractiveness. Leftism may be the egg that produces the chicken of unattractiveness.

And it seems likely that there is another influence of that kind.  Who looks more attractive, a person with a happy smile or a person with an angry face?  There is no doubt of the answer to that, is there?  So again, Leftism might lead to ugliness. And that could be permanent or semi permanent.  In the psychological literature on masking behaviour, we do come across examples of a habitual facial expression becoming more or less permanent.  So a face that is often angry may become normally angry, angry-looking regardless of the mood at the time. 

Trygve Braatoy's "psychomotor therapy" of the 1940s even claimed that if a mask is worn long enough it becomes the person.  There is some apparent experimental confirmation of that.

Perhaps I can close with a small personal anecdote.  Around 50 years ago, I noted that there was one person prominent in Australian public life who seemed to my judgment to be very good looking. He was David Flint.  He is now 80 but for decades now he has been remarkably and publicly conservative across the board, which is all the more remarkable since he is homosexual. And he still writes well, including praise for Mr Trump. His reaction to Trump's SOTU address:  "The West has at last a great leader who will not only make America great again, he will do that for the West"

Because the internet is less and less comprehensive the further back you go, I could find no pictures of the young Flint.  In the picture below he was in his 40s but it may give you some idea of his early looks.  He has some slight Asian (Indonesian) ancestry which may have something to do with his good skin. 




Scientists know that being attractive influences huge areas in a person's life, including how much they earn and what they enjoy doing in their spare time.

Now, a new study claims that beauty can make a person right-wing.

The research argues that people who are attractive are more likely to be conservative because they are 'blind' to the struggles of those who are less fortunate.

Attractiveness in a person often results in an easier life, which can cause desensitisation towards the need for many left-wing policies, such as financial aid

The study was conducted by Dr Rolfe Daus Peterson, a political scholar from Susquehanna University and Dr Carl Palmar, assistant professor in politics at Illinois State University.

The researchers claim that there is 'good reason to believe that individuals' physical attractiveness may alter their political values and worldviews'.

The scientists said in their study that attractive people have better social skills and are more popular, competent and intelligent due to something known as the 'halo effect' - where an individual's view of other people is altered by bias and stereotypes.

But their beauty also makes them less empathetic towards those who find life a struggle, making them more likely to be conservative.

The authors also noted previous studies have shown good-looking people are treated better than others, achieve higher status and are happier, and so are more likely to see the world as 'just' place.

To come to this finding, the scientists took figures from the 1972, 1974 and 1976 American National Studies surveys that asked those taking part to evaluate the appearance of others.

The survey also looked at participants political beliefs, income, race, gender, and education.

The researchers then compared those results with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) that looked at the characteristics of over 10,000 high school students who were rated by others on their level of beauty. 

By combining these results, the researchers said they found a link between political alignment and attractiveness.

They found that more attractive people have a 'blind spot' which results in conservatism. This blind spot stops them from seeing the need for government aid and support, which is a staple of the liberal manifesto.

In the study the researchers say: 'Even though this blind spot may not be universally held and physically attractive individuals do not always have easier lives, on average, physically attractive individuals face fewer hurdles navigating the social world.'

The results come almost a year after another study was published.  The study, led by the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Sweden, looked at the correlation between attractiveness and political belief in candidates.

They found that being better looking made you more likely to earn more, and that richer people are typically more opposed to policies favoured by the left, such as progressive taxes and welfare programmes.

In their paper, published in the Journal of Public Economics, the researchers, led by Niclas Berggren, wrote: 'Politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia.

'Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution.'

Previous studies have found that the more attractive people perceive themselves to be, the lower their preference for egalitarianism – another value associated with the political left.

To assess the link between attractiveness and political values, the researchers showed people pictures of political candidates in Finland, the US and Australia, and asked them to rate them on attractiveness.

The results showed that right-wing politicians were seen as more attractive than left-wingers.

SOURCE

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Primary Crisis in America Is Abandonment of Judeo-Christian 
Values, Dismissal of the Bible

Dennis Prager

I have believed all my life that the primary crisis in America and the West is the abandonment of Judeo-Christian values, or, one might say, the dismissal of the Bible.

Virtually everyone on the left thinks America would be better off as a secular nation. And virtually all conservative intellectuals don’t think it matters. How many intellectuals study the Bible and teach it to their children?

And yet, from the time long before the United States became a country until well into the 1950s, the Bible was not only the most widely read book in America—it was the primary vehicle by which each generation passed on morality and wisdom to the next generation.

Since that time, we have gone from a Bible-based society to a Bible-ignorant one—from the Bible being the Greatest Book to the Bible being an irrelevant book.

Ask your college-age child, niece, nephew, or grandchild to identify Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, or the ten plagues. Get ready for some blank stares.

I recently asked some college graduates (none of whom were Jewish) to name the four Gospels. None could.

But what we have today is worse than ignorance of the Bible. It is contempt for it. Just about anyone who quotes the Bible, let alone says it is the source of his or her values, is essentially regarded as a simpleton who is anti-science, anti-intellectual, and sexist.

Our society, one of whose mottos is “In God We Trust,” is becoming as godless as Western Europe—and, consequently, as morally confused and unwise as Europe.

Just as most professors regard most Bible believers as foolish, I have more or less the same view of most college professors in the liberal arts.

When I hear that someone has a Ph.D. in sociology, anthropology, political science, or English, let alone women’s studies or gender studies, I assume that he or she is morally confused and bereft of wisdom. Some are not, of course. But they constitute a small minority.

Whenever teenagers call my radio show or I meet one in person, I can usually identify—almost immediately—the ones who are receiving a religion-based education. They are far more likely to act mature and have more wisdom than their Bible-free peers.

One of our two greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, rarely attended church, but he read the Bible daily. As he said while president, “In regard to this great book, I have but to say, I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man.”

Were he able to observe America today, Lincoln would be shocked by many things. But none would shock him as much as the widespread ignorance of and contempt for the Bible.

I have taught the Torah, from the Hebrew original, for 40 years. Of the many things I have been blessed to be able to do—from hosting a national radio show to conducting orchestras—teaching Torah is my favorite.

When asked how it has affected my life, I often note that in my early 20s, when I was working through issues I had with my parents, there was nevertheless not a week during which I did not call them.

And there was one reason for this: I believe that God commanded us to “Honor your father and your mother.”

In my commentary, I point out that while the Torah commands us to love our neighbor, love God, and love strangers, it never commands us to love our parents. It was sophisticated enough to recognize that love of parents may be impossible but showing honor to a parent is a behavioral choice.

In America, there is an epidemic of children who no longer talk to one or both of their parents. In a few cases, this is warranted. But in most cases, adult children are inflicting terrible, unfair pain upon their parents.

This is one of a myriad of examples where believing in a God-based text is transformative.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The State of the Union stats don’t lie: Americans are turning against Trump-hating celebrities and buying into the President’s American dream - THAT’S a nightmare for Democrats

By Piers Morgan

The stats don't lie. Within minutes of President Donald Trump's first State of the Union speech, CBS News revealed their YouGov poll approval ratings on it. Unsurprisingly, 97% of Republican speech watchers liked it.

More surprisingly, 72% of Independents liked it. Staggeringly, 43% of Democrats liked it.

Overall, CBS reported that 75% of Americans approved of the speech. For such a seriously divisive and polarising President, who is currently languishing with just 39% personal approval ratings, these were sensationally good results.

Interestingly, 8/10 Americans in the poll felt the President was trying to unite the country with his speech and two thirds of Americans said it made them feel proud. Less than a quarter that watched said it made them feel scared or angry.

Contrast this reaction with the instant and so tediously predictable blind rage spewed by the world's liberal celebrities on social media before, during and after the address.

From my own unofficial poll – i.e. my own eyes on Twitter – I'd say 99% of them were so furious at the speech they could barely think straight. 'I was told darkness could not exist in the light,' tweeted Sarah Silverman. 'But here it is, for everyone to not see.'

Jim Carrey tweeted an illustration of sharks across a map of America, then another of a weeping Abraham Lincoln and the caption: 'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.'

Andy Lassner, producer of the insufferably smug The Ellen Show sneered: 'Good luck 'Saturday Night Live' on trying to make this any more f***ing ridiculous than it already is.'

Jeffrey Wright raged: 'Can't even watch this vile, deceitful fraud and his bizarre cult of self-interested sycophants.'

Patton Oswalt seethed: 'I'm gonna fact check this speech: whatever he just said was bullsh*t.'

Jessica Chastain urged people not to watch the speech at all.

Billy Eichner fumed: 'The President is a lying, incompetent, racist, misogynist sack of sh*t.'

And George Takei spouted: 'I'm not watching some frothing orange gorilla read off a teleprompter.'

On and on it went, with these stars and many more assuming America agreed with them.

But it turned out the vast majority of Americans DIDN'T agree with them, which suggests they're no longer listening to what celebrities say about politics or Donald Trump.

For more evidence of this, look at Sunday night's Grammys that turned into a marathon political rally of epically dreary proportions. Ratings duly plunged 24% to an all-time low.

Why? Because Americans are sick and tired of entertainers preaching about politics at awards shows, particularly when they're all preaching from the same liberal Trump-loathing handbook.

It's hard not to agree with White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders when she said yesterday: 'I think if Americans cared what celebrities thought then Hillary would be president but they clearly don't.'

She added: 'Frankly, I feel sorry for these people. They're so focused on hating this president that they're missing all of the great things that are happening in this country.'

Now, she would say that wouldn't she… and yet, she has a point.

None of these celebrity Trump-bashers ever give him credit for anything. Yet there are things happening in and to America right now for which he absolutely deserves credit not derision.

Most notably, the US economy is full steam ahead, with consistently impressive quarterly growth, the stock market smashing weekly records, and job numbers at 17-year highs.

Yes, it's true that this is continuing a positive economic trend from the Obama years. But it's also true that nobody would be blaming Obama if the economy had weakened under Trump in his first year.

Most impartial observers credit the President's war on regulation and his big tax reform plan as the major driving forces for the current economic positivity.

Certainly, it helped inspire Apple, one of America's biggest overseas job outsourcing companies, to recently announce they're bringing $350billion and 20,000 jobs back home to the US economy.

But have you seen a single liberal celebrity acknowledge that? No.

Trump vowed in his presidential campaign to whack ISIS hard and as he said last night, the terror group's now been driven out of Iraq and Syria.

This is a significant achievement too but no liberal celebrity will thank him for it, so profound and deep-rooted is the antipathy towards him.

What they don't seem to understand is that the American people are beginning to calm down about President Trump, understand him better, accept him for what he is – good and bad - and appreciate some of the good stuff he is doing.

That much is crystal clear from the reaction to his SOTU speech that was long, thoughtful, and delivered with none of the frothing, hyperbolic style that we have seen from him in the past.

As I think I may have mentioned (!) I spent time with President Trump last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and I was struck by how relaxed and confident he seemed, both in my interview and in his speech to the world's business elite the next day.

I was also struck by how much more diplomatic, conciliatory and unifying he was too – especially with his statement that yes, it's America First but no, it's not America Alone.

This approach was a far cry from the raging bull in a china shop that rampaged to the election win and has presided over a chaotic and turbulent first year in office.

It appears that Trump has finally begun to make the pivot many of his supporters hoped he would make a lot earlier – from firebrand, fight-picking, tweet-storming, rabble-rousing candidate, to a more considered man as President.

I think the reason for this simple: success.

Trump's entire DNA is predicated on winning. Every sinew of his being for the past 50 years has pulsated with a burning, insatiable desire to win.

'You've gotta win,' Trump once told me. 'That's what it's all about. You know, Muhammad Ali used to talk and talk, but he won. If you talk and talk but you lose, the act doesn't play.'

And now, after months of under-achievement, he's beginning to win.

Meanwhile, his opponents don't seem to have a clue either how to stop him, or who in their ranks can beat him in 2020.

One thing's for sure: it won't be Hillary Clinton, who apparently still hasn't got the message either that she lost or that hanging out with liberal celebrities is a vote-crusher to middle America.

I don't know what possessed her to pop up in the middle of the Grammys to read out Trump-mocking lines from Michael Wolff's book, but all it did was remind everyone yet again that she's a sore loser, and that the Democrats haven't found anyone else to replace her yet.

Until they do, Trump will continue to surge in confidence and if the economy does the same then I predict he will be re-elected at the next election by a bigger majority.

Don't believe me? Take a long, careful look at that CBS poll after last night's SOTU speech. Like I said, the stats don't lie.

'This is our new American moment,' Trump said last night. 'There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.'

This message, one of his 115 applause lines, was approved by 75% of the country that watched it.

Trump's American Dream is very rapidly becoming the Democrat Nightmare.

SOURCE

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Stockton Gets Ready to Experiment With Universal Basic Income

More California dreaming.  Should be fun to watch

Wage stagnation. Rising housing prices. Loss of middle-class jobs. The looming threat of automation. These are some of the problems facing Stockton and its residents, but the city’s mayor, Michael Tubbs, says his city is far from unique.

Stockton is one of many Bay Area cities on the fringe of the wealth accumulating in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The Central Valley city went bankrupt in 2012, and for decades it has been trying to diversify its agriculture-based economy.

“I feel that as mayor it’s my responsibility to do all I could to begin figuring out what’s the best way to make sure that folks in our community have a real economic floor,” Tubbs said.

Tubbs is coordinating an effort to test a new way to sustain residents: universal basic income, or UBI. For one year, several dozen Stockton families will get $500 a month, no strings attached.

Dorian Warren co-chairs the Economic Security Project, which is contributing $1 million to the initiative. He said the goal is to gather data on the economic and social impacts of giving people a basic income.

In addition to tracking what residents do with the money, Warren said they will be monitoring how a basic income affects things like self-esteem and identity.

“What does it mean to say, ‘Here is unconditional guaranteed income just based on you being a human being?’ ” Warren asked.

The hope is to demonstrate UBI’s potential and encourage other places to give it a try. UBI has recently gotten a boost from Silicon Valley moguls concerned about income inequality and the future of society, but the idea isn’t actually all that new, said Michelle Anderson, a Stanford law professor.

Anderson said, “UBI was first pitched by Nixon as an answer to post-industrial job losses.”

With this experiment, Anderson said Stockton may discover it gets more economic stimulus by giving money to its citizens rather than corporations it hopes will bring in jobs and tax revenue.

“The UBI that is being proposed in Stockton now is very small compared to the big corporate subsidies that cities like that engage in,” Anderson said.

Stockton racked up millions in debt on development projects in the past, which got the city into trouble, Mayor Tubbs said.

“We’ve overspent on things like arenas and marinas and things of that sort to try to lure in tourism and dollars that way,” he said.

Tubbs thinks the UBI experiment will show that Stockton’s best bet is to invest in its own people.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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