Tuesday, November 20, 2018



Will Political Correctness self-destruct?

Our limited government was founded on the principle of citizens governing themselves through morality and social accountability.

We, as a people, looked up to those who were of high moral standing. Men regarded as wise and worthy were the ones who framed our Constitution, and they laced biblical principles and morals throughout it.

However, now that morals have gone drastically out of vogue, what will people use to set themselves apart? How will they show that they’re better than their competitors? How will politicians convince you that you should elect them?

Enter political correctness, the religious doctrine of the American left in 2018. It is a new guiding light, the yardstick against which politicians and individuals are measured to determine their worth. It’s also, at its core, all about getting ahead.

Why else would people keep upping the ante? We constantly have to be more “woke” and all the time new ideas become PC or not, because the person who introduces you to each new concept demonstrates his higher degree of wokeness. He “gets ahead.”

We see it not only in politicians, but also in our entertainment.

One recently aired TV show had a plotline in which the winner of a Halloween costume contest won a day off. The protagonist then proceeded to break down every costume by convincing some other employee that each was offensive: Hula girl was offensive to someone half-Hawaiian, Aldan was offensive to someone from the Middle East, etc.

The same held true for reality TV, when a dance group won a million dollars by breaking their season-long streak of performing the same style that got them to the finals by performing a song about “waiting on the world to change.”

“If we had the power / To bring our neighbors home from war / They would have never missed a Christmas / No more ribbons on their door.”

It was risky, but risky in a way calculated to bring tears to the eyes of the liberal judges. And it won them $1 million.

We’ve reached a point where even those who buy into the idea of PC culture are starting to make fun of it.

It was recently brought to my attention that Democrats would probably not have such a hard time blocking illegal immigration if they thought that illegals might vote Republican.

This point was made by Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, who likened the way Democrats were treating illegal immigration to the immature antics of a child. He pointed out that they can afford to pontificate about the cruel nature of border security, because it’s not their job to secure the borders.

Once you see it for what it is, you can’t stop seeing it. From the smug and haughty holier-than-thou social justice warriors of today, to the chilly calculated glee on the faces of politicians when they see one of their colleagues make a misstep in the minefield of political correctness, it’s all around us, and it’s growing, like a flesh-eating bacteria.

But here’s the good news: It has no roots, and it’s trying to overreach. What may have started as an argument in favor of women’s right to education is now overstepping with transgender indoctrination in schools.

The point of political correctness was, in the beginning, supposed to be making others feel cared for and included, but there is very little about the movement that can’t be achieved by following the Golden Rule: Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.

PC culture says there is a set of rules you need to follow, but those rules are constantly in flux because people are literally making them up as they go along.

When asked by “The Originalist” Director Molly Smith what keeps her “hopeful,” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg referenced something that her late husband, Marty, used to tell her.

“My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle — it is the pendulum,” Ginsburg said. “And when it goes very far in one direction you can count on its swinging back.”

There are only a few possibilities about what happens from here. One is that Americans completely throw off the mantle of political correctness, the doctrine that has replaced morals, and try to repair the social experiment that is our republic, or we find another way to get antifa and the like in hand.

Maybe political correctness worked well for a while, but the screaming, masked throngs of entitled children have ruined that. As Americans, we have a long and illustrious history of not negotiating with terrorists, even if you recruit them from Ivy League schools and stick a locally sourced pumpkin spice latte in their hands.

A terrorist is as a terrorist does, and yet we constantly bow to the throngs of social justice warriors, fraught with internal turmoil, attempting to both hold those around them to an impossible moral standard and at the same time deny that morals exist.

Morality is established to lead you somewhere. We understand the morality of the radical jihadists because we have seen where it leads them. Traditional Christian morals, however, have been all but removed from acceptability in the West, though they were adhered to by many in our history, including our Founders. People could be pointed out as exemplars of good morals.

But we’re not allowed to do that anymore.

The new morality of political correctness is leading us somewhere else: toward more rules, regulations and the bigger government necessary to control a people who won’t control themselves.

Adolf Hitler said, “I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience, imperious, relentless and cruel.”

PC culture has more or less accomplished the same thing, raising up those who are cruel to those who cross their impossible standards made up on the fly, and something will arise to fill in the vacuum of a generation out of control.

A dictator can require a generation to abandon their morals and empathy, or a lack of morals and empathy can require a dictator to control a generation.

SOURCE






'Women love shopping, men like cars': DR MICHAEL MOSLEY on the truth behind those gender stereotypes

According to popular mythology, men are obsessed by cars, electronic gadgets and sports. We cling on to the TV remote and God forbid we miss a Premier League football match.

Women, on the other hand, enjoy clothes shopping and chatting. They are more empathetic, understanding and far more helpful in an emotional crisis than us bullish blokes.

These classic stereotypes have long been debated, with many arguing that the categorisation of the sexes is outdated nonsense.

But studies suggest that some emotional experiences, such as stress, can be processed differently by men and women. Men typically turn theirs ‘outwards’, resulting in increased anger-management problems and higher rates of suicide, and women turn theirs ‘inward’, making them more likely to be anxious and depressed.

Now a new landmark study by researchers at Cambridge University provides further evidence that some age-old gender ‘myths’ may not be so far from the truth…

For the new study, researchers asked 670,000 people to complete an online questionnaire that was designed to separate out the empathisers – those who identify and understand others’ emotions – from the systemisers – those who analyse complex systems.

Participants had to state if they agreed or disagreed with statements including ‘When I talk to people, I tend to talk about their experiences rather than my own’ and ‘I am fascinated by how machines work’.

The scientists were testing the theory that men were more likely to agree with the final statement, giving them a higher ‘systemiser’ score.

Similarly, they predicted that women would more likely agree with the first statement, indicating an increased ability to put themselves in others’ shoes.

Although there were plenty of exceptions, on the whole the results proved the researchers’ theories correct: men did indeed score higher for ‘systemising’ than for ‘empathising’, while for women it was the other way round.

So far, so unsurprising. But the most intriguing part of the Cambridge research lies in some of the explanations behind these striking differences…

Are male and female differences simply the result of exposure to social pressures in childhood, or is there something else going on?

The fascinating work of Professor Simon Baron Cohen, who ran the Cambridge study, has explored whether some gender differences begin in the womb.

His pioneering research involved the collection, and measurement, of compounds in the wombs of more than 19,000 pregnant women. These compounds, contained within the amniotic fluid, included the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen, as well as stress hormone cortisol.

Prof Baron Cohen and his team then followed the children for more than a decade, testing them on cognitive and behavioural measures every couple of years.

They found that being exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb was associated with being less empathetic, and better at visual spatial challenges later in life such as imagining how a shape would look if it were rotated. This is because testosterone is typically seen as a male hormone because it ‘masculinises’ boys’ brains and bodies – it is responsible for the formation of the male reproductive organs. Similarly, oestrogen is responsible for the reproductive development of girls.

Although men and women produce both hormones, men have higher levels of testosterone, and women more oestrogen. Intriguingly, girls exposed to high levels of testosterone in the womb also exhibit more ‘systemising’ behaviours than typically seen in boys.

Prof Baron Cohen’s research relates to the developmental disorder autism and he has developed a theory that those who have it are more likely to be ‘male-brained’.

Interestingly, high levels of testosterone in the womb are associated with a greater chance of developing autism, which seems to affect more boys than girls.

At the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, where he is the director, Prof Baron Cohen has found that those with autism – who typically struggle to recognise and understand the feelings of others – score at the ‘male end’ of a systemising-empathising test.

Although they may struggle with some forms of empathy, that doesn’t mean they don’t care about other people.

Prof Baron Cohen thinks that we should cherish and celebrate the wealth of talents autistic people have, rather than obsess over their difficulties.

If you fancy testing the gender of your brain, or indeed of your partner’s, visit autism researchcentre.com/arc_tests for a range of systemising-empathising surveys.

There is another, more surprising way, of assessing how much testosterone or oestrogen you were exposed to in the womb – by measuring the length of your fingers.

As men are exposed to more testosterone, their index, or first, finger tends to be shorter than the ring finger.

In women, the two fingers are typically the same length. This is known as the ‘index-to-ring-finger-ratio’.

A large number of studies have shown a link between this ratio and a range of different behavioural traits including aggression and risk-taking.

The finger-length difference can be really subtle, so you will need a ruler. First, measure the ring finger of your right hand, from the crease where it joins the hand round to the tip of the finger, under the nail. Then do the same with your index finger.

The bigger the difference between the two numbers, the more typically ‘male’ your brain is considered to be – and conversely for the more typical ‘female’ brain.

SOURCE







Chris Hemsworth's wife Elsa Pataky says society has to be 'careful' about the #MeToo movement as she talks about raising her two young sons

The women of Hollywood have been leading the way with the #MeToo movement.

And while Elsa Pataky is supportive of the fight against sexual harassment and assault, the actress also worries that things could go too far.

Speaking with Stellar on Sunday, the 42-year-old wife of Chris Hemsworth stated: 'To have change, you must always go to the other extreme, just for people to see it and have a voice. But we have to be careful. '

Elsa added: 'I feel like men are scared to speak (now) because they don't know what to say, because they feel like we are going to jump on them if they say the wrong thing, the wrong word - even to just talk about the subject.'

The blonde beauty is the mother of two twin boys, four-year-olds Tristan and Sasha, and she told the magazine that she doesn't want her them to grow up in fear. 'I have two sons and I don't want my sons to be scared, either.'

Elsa said that men and women 'need to be on the same page' when it comes to the #MeToo movement and the work that needs to be done against widespread sexual harassment. 

The actress's philosophy may be formed by the fact that she is also a mother to a young girl.

In addition to Tristan and Sasha, Elsa and Chris are also parents to six-year-old daughter, India Rose. 

SOURCE






Nearly half of Australians want the number of Muslim immigrants slashed following the Melbourne terrorist attack

Almost half of Australians want Muslim immigration to be cut following the Melbourne terrorist attack, a poll has found.  

The Fairfax-Ipsos survey was conducted after Islamic State sympathiser Hassan Khalif Shire Ali attacked random people on Bourke Street, Melbourne, on November 9, knifing three and killing one.

The poll found 46 per cent of Australians believe that Muslim migration numbers should be reduced.

Of those surveyed, 35 per cent believed the intake should remain the same and only 14 per cent of voters supported an increase.

The telephone poll of 1200 respondents conducted nationally found that a majority of Coalition voters and one third of Labor voters backed the cut.

Muslim leaders deflected criticism of Islam in the wake of the Bourke St attack by stressing that Shire Ali's actions were caused by mental illness and not by religion.

Many Australians are concerned about the rise of Sharia law – the Islamic set of laws that are drawn from the Koran and Hadith.

Islamic State and other Islamist groups are fighting to establish Islam as a political system not just a religion, with the rule of sharia law.

Secular Muslims oppose the implementation of Islam as a set of laws.

Overwhelming majorities of Muslims in countries including Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, want sharia to be the law of the land, according to Pew Research survey results published in 2013.

Some elements of Sharia are applied in varying degrees in the legal codes of several Muslim-majority countries.

The Fairfax-Ipsos poll also found 45 per cent of voters would like to see overall immigration numbers reduced, with 23 per cent arguing for a rise and 29 per cent happy with the status quo.

The 2016 Census revealed Australia’s population grew by 1.9 million people in the five years to 2016, driven by a 1.3 million increase in new immigrants.

Of those, 86 per cent or 1.11 million settled in Australia's major cities, according to government data, causing strain on infrastructure in Sydney and Melbourne.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has called for a return to Howard-era immigration levels of about 45,000 a year.

Fairfax reported that Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton reduced permanent migration from the official estimate of 190,000 to an actual intake of 163,000.

Data from the 2016 Census showed the Muslim population in Australia has soared to more than 604,000 people, overtaking Buddhism as the most popular non-Christian religion.

The number of Muslims living in the country has almost doubled from 341,000 in the the 2006 census.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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