The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Four Legs Good! Two Legs Bad!’

Posted on | June 8, 2016 | 18 Comments

 

“Some animals are more equal than others,” as everyone learns at the end of Animal Farm, but what would George Orwell say about this?

A lecturers’ union [in England] is refusing to let its officers take part in debates at an equality summit if they are white, straight, able-bodied men.
The equality conference of the University and College Union said that members must declare their ‘protected characteristic’ — whether they are gay, disabled, female or from an ethnic minority — when applying to attend.
Activists say that it means representatives who do not qualify cannot participate in all of the discussions — even though they have been elected by their union branch.
There are four sections of the conference — for women, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people, ethnic minorities and those with disabilities.
Though there were also some ‘joint sessions’ last year, for break-out discussions reps must have the relevant ‘characteristic’.
That means reps would be barred from debates on areas they were not affected by, and a straight, white man who was not disabled would be unable to attend any.
Yesterday critics branded the policy ridiculous — arguing that people from all walks of life can be dedicated to the cause of equality.
Emma-Jane Phillips, who sits on the UCU equality committee, said: ‘Equality reps are passionate about equality regardless of their own situation.
To infer that someone does not understand someone’s situation just because you don’t tick a box is insulting.’
The Northumbria University lecturer said it meant some reps would have to lie about having a protected characteristic to be able to attend — something she said they would be unwilling to do.
She told Times Higher Education magazine: ‘It is ridiculous that people who regard equality as their life can’t attend our equality conference.’
The issue was raised at UCU’s congress, held in Liverpool last week, when a motion was proposed to give equality reps the automatic right to attend conferences without having to ‘self-identify’. However, it was defeated — the only motion not to pass during the summit’s opening day. . . .
It comes amid a growing culture of students demanding ‘safe spaces’ in which people are banned who might express offensive views. . . .
Last year, Bahar Mustafa, diversity officer at Goldsmiths, University of London, was criticised for banning white men from an equality meeting and writing on Twitter: ‘Kill all white men.’
Students at Cardiff University tried to get feminist Germaine Greer banned from speaking because of her views on transgender people.

Here’s a little story for you kids: In 1970, when I was in fifth grade, we got a new English teacher at Lithia Springs Elementary School.

Tom Dowd was fresh out of Berry College. He had what was considered long hair by the standards of Douglas County, Georgia, at that time. Mr. Dowd also had a mustache — quite “mod” he seemed to us kids, who had heretofore never had such a young teacher — and he also had some interesting ideas about teaching English. Tom Dowd read Animal Farm to us.

For a full week or so, we sat there, about 30 fifth-graders, while our English teacher read aloud to us Orwell’s classic allegory of the Soviet Union. Mr. Dowd explained the symbolism to us — Old Major as Marx, Snowball as Trotsky, Napoleon as Stalin — and thus at the tender age of 10, I learned the history of the Bolshevik Revolution, and also learned from Animal Farm a profound understanding of totalitarianism that has stayed with me all these years.

The Soviet Union was an empire built on deceit and cruelty. The promise of “equality” under socialism was a Big Lie in 1917, and it is still a Big Lie in the 21st century. Not until I was a grown-up, more than a decade after I had watched on live TV as the Berlin Wall was torn down, did I begin to learn the full details of Bolshevik evil. It is estimated that 100 million people were killed by Marxist-Leninist regimes in the 20th century, and what killed them? “Equality!”

There is no such thing as equality in this world. At no point in human history has anything like equality existed above the level of the rudest poverty and ignorance of primitive savagery, nor is there any prospect that “progress” will lead to equality in the future. As the Nobel Prize economist Friedrich Hayek explained, in his masterful refutation of Rawlsian egalitarianism, “social justice” is a mirage. Every political leader who promises to bring about “equality” is a liar, and every intellectual who attempts to mislead young fools with nonsense about “social justice” is a dangerous fraud. Ronald Reagan said this of the Cold War:

While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I’ve always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.
Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a witness to one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western World exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God. And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, “Ye shall be as gods.”

Where are today’s Tom Dowds? Where are the teachers who will remind children of a lesson the world should never be allowed to forget?

Thursday afternoon on Capitol Hill, there will be a discussion hosted by the Young America’s Foundation called entitled “President Reagan’s Principles and Philosophy: Now More than Ever.” Our nation is in peril in a world that has forgotten the great truths of history.




 

Category: Education, History, Sex Trouble

Comments

18 Responses to “‘Four Legs Good! Two Legs Bad!’”

  1. M. Thompson
    June 8th, 2016 @ 11:16 am

    It was read by 8th graders as a required item 17 years ago in the suburban Illinois district I was attending, I read it on my own in 6th grade. I wonder if it’s still on the program.

  2. Jack
    June 8th, 2016 @ 11:34 am

    I will work harder. Napoleon is always right.

  3. CrustyB
    June 8th, 2016 @ 3:11 pm

    Breasts bad! Dressing like the kid from “Jerry McGuire” good?

    Albany Park Trans Activist Tries To Raise Money For Life-Changing Surgery

  4. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 8th, 2016 @ 3:42 pm

    As they said in Breaking Bad, men provide. It is just what they do.

  5. RS
    June 8th, 2016 @ 4:18 pm

    A minor quibble: Socialism does, in fact, provide “equality” to a majority* of the citizens under its sway. It’s just that the equality is one of misery. (Animal Farm and 1984 were on our sixth grade reading list. Our older English teacher had dealt with the Soviets during WWII and thus his interest in enlightening us.)

    *I say a “majority of the citizens” inasmuch as there will always be the few with the corner offices, the publicly subsidized trips to Davos for Gaia-worshiping, and the secret accounts in the Caymans.

  6. Harry Case
    June 8th, 2016 @ 4:28 pm

    I got hold of this in 7th grade and became an Orwell fan. I read this to my children and my 30 year daughter still reminds me of how our family sat together when she was 8 years old and I read it to them for bedtime. She had no idea how unique she was till much later when
    it was on a reading list at college

  7. Squid Hunt ?Patriarch
    June 8th, 2016 @ 5:38 pm

    When are white people going to start ignoring these losers and forming their own clubs? Then we’ll get back to diversity and inclusion.

  8. mole
    June 8th, 2016 @ 5:59 pm

    What an awesome teacher.
    We had one a little similar unfortunately I wasnt in his class, but my best mate was, Canadian chap who went through Mao’s “little red book” when a student brought it to school.
    All he did was read out some of the sillier bits of “cod philosophy” contained in it and managed to discredit the idea through the whole school.

    It was an excellent lesson in how debating or exposing an idea is better than banning it and allowing its perverted proponents to spread only the bits they want heard.

    Also this might amuse a few ex-military types. Our army has been white-anted by the PC police in the top echelons, including the rather silly “religion of peace” idea.
    How well are the mandatory “cultural sensitivity” lessons going among the front line troops?

    Not real well.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/most-adf-soldiers-believe-islam-promotes-violence-and-terrorism/news-story/a82e81ee27309612a5c120c3e121baee

    ….“The best estimate … for the proportion of soldiers who have received cultural sensitivity training and who believe that the Muslim religion promotes violence and terrorism is 91 per cent.

    “The corresponding figure for those who have not had cultural sensitivity training is 17 per cent.”

    Dr Miller, who surveyed a sample of 182 soldiers, writes that “there are a number of issues which could arise if anti-Muslim sentiment is widespread within the defence force.”….

  9. Joe Joe
    June 9th, 2016 @ 1:31 am

    Orwell is a dead white male. Today’s students read Maya Angelou instead. That’s the issue.

  10. gunga
    June 9th, 2016 @ 6:51 am

    Life-changing…such a non-judgemental turn of a phrase… This is more The Island of Dr. Moreau than Animal Farm.

  11. Quartermaster
    June 9th, 2016 @ 11:37 am

    Breasts are fantastic! Heretic!!!
    Burn the heretic. Burn, burn, burn….

  12. Quartermaster
    June 9th, 2016 @ 11:38 am

    I read “Animal Farm” in the 8th grade in the dependent schools in Germany. The Army thought it was an excellent book for us young minds.

  13. Warmongerel
    June 9th, 2016 @ 2:13 pm

    When my daughter was in 4th grade, I bribed her to do a book report on “Animal Farm” for school.

    Her Lefty teacher hated me for it, but had no choice but to giver her an “A”. I doubt that she lets the kids choose their own books anymore because of that doubleungood badthink.

    And my daughter, 10 years later, has never forgotten the lessons about Leftism that she learned from that book.

  14. Joan Of Argghh!
    June 9th, 2016 @ 4:42 pm

    Now that we’re all grown up, it’s time to read CSLewis’ Space Trilogy, or at least, “That Hideous Strength” in order to round out the prophetic utterances of Orwell’s peers. Lewis was never in doubt about his opinion of the egghead elites.

  15. DeadMessenger
    June 9th, 2016 @ 8:13 pm

    Bet we can guess that answer to that. That book has words, complete sentences and punctuation, and no emoticons. What student could understand it these days?

  16. DeadMessenger
    June 9th, 2016 @ 8:19 pm

    Wait. What? Trans-inclusive insurance coverage? If trans people can get elective surgery and have it covered by insurance, then why can’t I? I’d feel a lot better about myself if I could get a butt lift. [eyeroll]

  17. M. Thompson
    June 9th, 2016 @ 9:36 pm

    Wealthy, white suburb, so quite likely. The problem is, there’s going to be a lot of Special Snowflakes there.

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    June 13th, 2016 @ 11:26 am

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