Sunday, February 09, 2020



The SNP paradox: They campaign as national populists, but govern as cosmopolitan technocrats

The Scottish elite have discovered the power of nationalism.  They are true Fascists: Nationalistic Leftists

The rise of the Scottish National Party has been remarkable. In the recent UK General Election, it won 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland (albeit with only 45 per cent of the vote). Back in 2010, the SNP won just six seats, compared to the Labour Party’s 41. In 2019, Labour won only one seat. In this respect, we can see that the SNP has replaced Labour as the dominant party in Scotland – no mean feat for a group of politicians who not so long ago were known as the Tartan Tories.

In part, the SNP’s rise can be explained by the collapse of the once distinct political outlooks of left and right. The Labour Party no longer represents labouring people and there is no labour movement, as such, for Labour to represent. In many respects, the Labour Party is past its sell-by date (as are the Tories) and this has provided the space for an alternative to emerge.

In Scotland, unfortunately, this alternative came in the form of the SNP. At a time when there are few big ideas in politics, the SNP has one defining idea – that Scotland could genuinely be different by going for independence from the UK.

The SNP now presents itself in a more social-democratic, leftist way than it once did. It has also harnessed the anti-Tory sentiment that is common up north through the relentless condemnation of all things ‘Westminster’. The political chasm between the voters and the almost alien world occupied by politicians is reframed as a purely geographical problem, as something stemming from the toffs down south.

As a Brexiteer and a democrat who lives in Scotland, I found the success of the SNP in the last election frustrating. Boris Johnson’s Tories won in England and Wales under a pro-Brexit, pro-democracy banner. But in Scotland, the SNP won with an overtly anti-democratic ‘Stop Brexit’ campaign.

But despite their recent successes, the Scot Nats should be wary of resting on their laurels. There are many contradictions within the SNP project, which, if they were to properly come to the surface, could be the party’s undoing.

Writers examining the rise of populism and the new divisions in contemporary politics have identified three new areas of conflict. First, the rise of technocratic governance, which clashes with demands for popular democracy. Secondly, the rise of the supranational, as opposed to the nation. And lastly, the clash between cosmopolitanism and community. To a great extent, the SNP presents itself as being on the side of popular democracy, the nation and the community. But in reality, it is far more representative of the global, cosmopolitan, technocratic new elite.

The SNP represents the new technocratic elite as much as – if not more than – any other UK political party. You see this in the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, where the SNP has been in government since 2007. The SNP MSP’s comfort zone is the committee room, sitting with like-minded lawyers, heads of charities, academics and experts, formulating policies in an echo chamber, at a distance from the electorate.

But at the same time as being part of this aloof class of technocrats, the SNP claims to be the voice of the people, defending popular democracy against those in ‘Westminster’ who suffocate the voice of Scotland. The SNP tries to promote the idea of nationhood, and to engage with a national desire for more control over the country. It pretends to represent democracy and freedom, promising a vision of a new nation built upon the sovereignty of the Scottish people, breaking from the shackles of Tory England.

This is all totally unconvincing – not least because the SNP is wedded to the European Union, a supranational bureaucracy that undermines national sovereignty. Indeed, leading SNP figures, such as MEP Alyn Smith, portray the EU in the most remarkable, Disneyfied way imaginable, in which the EU is responsible for everything from world peace to workers’ rights. The SNP is among the most pro-EU political parties in the UK. This is strange considering the party is meant to be about nationhood and taking back national control for the Scottish people. With its craven love of all things Brussels, the SNP is the least convincing national independence movement in the history of national independence movements.

Similarly, the SNP is able to tap into a sense of community, of tradition and commonality, between people. David Goodhart’s idea of the ‘Somewheres’ captures this sentiment well. Many SNP supporters want a sense of belonging, of groundedness to a certain place, and of Scottishness. But at the same time, SNP MPs, MEPs and MSPs seem deeply uncomfortable and suspicious of the people of Scotland – a fear and loathing of ordinary people that is shared across the global cosmopolitan elite.

SNP politicians are chronically politically correct, prone to looking down their noses at ordinary people, and always on the lookout for new laws and regulations to control people’s speech and personal lives and relationships (see the now-defunct Named Person legislation or the recent smacking ban).

These contradictions are yet to play out properly, but there is a growing sense of confusion about what the party is for. For example, many SNP supporters and voters hate the politically correct, nanny-state dimension of the SNP. The party has a tendency to patronise the public and to interfere in their daily lives (their drinking, eating and parenting habits and use of language), and this aggravates many people. There is also a sense of frustration among Scotland’s voters about the poor state of many public services that the SNP is responsible for, from education to health and policing.

At the moment, the SNP has managed to avoid confronting these contradictions. SNP politicians stand for election as populists shouting ‘power to the people’, while running Scotland through committees and experts. The party campaigns for an ‘independent’ Scotland, but one that will be subsumed into the European Union. And it stands as a defender of democracy, while pushing the anti-democratic policy of stopping Brexit.

The SNP has benefited from the collapse of both the Tories and Labour in Scotland. It acts as a kind of anti-matter, feeding off the end of class politics and masquerading as the people’s party. Logically, the many contradictions of the SNP should result in a split, or the emergence of new political parties. For the people of Scotland, let’s hope so.

SOURCE 





Puberty blockers for confused children

Data on all aspects of transgender medical interventions are poor. No one knows how many children have been prescribed these drugs. Little is known about how they have fared since. But in the past decade there has been a surge in the number of children treated as trans. Clinics serving them have mushroomed. In 2007 there was one. Today there are perhaps 50. Waiting lists at many are long and lengthening.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that standards of care have failed to keep pace. The biggest concern is that children put on blockers—first prescribed between the ages of 9 and 14 to suppress the action of sex hormones—and later, testosterone or oestrogen, do not first undergo sufficiently comprehensive evaluations.

Guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health say such interventions should follow “extensive exploration of psychological, family and social issues”. That seems elementary. There is no medical test for gender dysphoria. Research suggests that most children who identify as the other sex eventually grow out of it. They are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Untangling all of this and establishing whether a child is likely to go on feeling that they are in the wrong body—a guess, at best— poses significant challenges for children, parents and their doctors.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, a professor of psychology at Pacific University in Oregon who helped found America’s first transgender clinic for children in Boston, reckons the “vast majority” of children on blockers or sex hormones have not undergone proper assessments. This, she says, is because of a shortage of mental-health professionals with the necessary training and the desire of doctors to provide care for a group that has long been denied it.

This carries the obvious risk that patients will regret transitioning. No one knows how many people fall into this category. A small number of those put on blockers and sex hormones have since “detransitioned”. The most outspoken among them are lesbians who say that had they been encouraged to explore gender non-conformi-ty—the idea, for instance, that women can be butch—rather than transgenderism, they would not have taken testosterone. Others say mental-health problems caused their gender dysphoria and cross-sex hormones were prescribed as the solution.

A second, related problem concerns the way blockers are sold to patients and their families. Developed in the 1980s to treat premature puberty, they have transformed transgender health care since they were first used for this purpose in the late 1990s. Doctors attest that they save adolescents who feel desperate about developing the “wrong” sex characteristics from enormous distress. Blockers can forestall more traumatic interventions later: the removal of breasts, or the shaving of an Adam’s apple. Their effects are largely reversible. Doctors who prescribe them routinely refer to blockers as a “conservative” measure.

Yet few children seem to step off the treatment path that blockers set them on. The great majority go on to sex hormones. Given the inadequacy of many pre-treat-ment evaluations, this seems unlikely to be wholly the result of sound diagnoses.

Puberty blockers also have other sideeffects. Over time, they can affect bone density. This means that doctors are keen to move patients who want to continue treatment onto sex hormones within a few years. But many of the effects of these are irreversible, including infertility. Paul Hruz, an endocrinologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, says interrupting puberty may have other harmful effects. A surge of hormones during puberty may help put adolescents at ease with their birth gender. Puberty blockers would prevent that process.

Few doctors worried by these problems are prepared to speak about them openly. That is unsurprising given how inflammatory the issue has become. When Lisa Littman, a professor of behavioural and social sciences at Brown University, published a paper in 2018 in which she noted that most transgender children were teenage girls with no history of gender dysphoria—a phenomenon she called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” —she was denounced as transphobic.

In such a polarised environment, bills proposing blanket bans of puberty blockers are likely to be counterproductive. They may push advocates for early intervention to further extremes. A better approach would be twofold. A neutral assessment of the existing data on the use of blockers, hormones and their effects would help patients and their families make decisions. Most existing research has been undertaken by those working in the field. At the same time, clinics should ensure that children in transgender clinics undergo comprehensive mental-health evaluations.

For all this to happen there needs to be an acknowledgment of the dangers of starting children on often irreversible treatments. At present, that is unimaginable.

SOURCE 





Obama Awarded the Medal of Freedom to a Sex Predator, But Liberals Are Triggered by Rush Limbaugh's award

If you watched President Trump's State of the Union address, one of the more touching moments was when he recognized Rush Limbaugh, acknowledging his recent cancer diagnosis, and announced that he was awarding Rush with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was awarded to him on the spot by First Lady Melania Trump.

True to form, liberals were outraged that such a high honor would be bestowed upon a man they've hated longer than Trump.

"Oh FFS Rush Limbaugh getting the Medal of Honor [sic] is a low I sure wasn’t expecting," tweeted former Rep. Katie Hill. You probably remember her for resigning from Congress after her affair with a staffer was revealed by RedState in October.

"Only one thing to say about Rush Limbaugh getting a Presidential Medal if [sic] Freedom at The State of the Union: I loathe this f***ing man," tweeted Rob Reiner.

There are reactions from triggered liberals I won't bother quoting, but I will explain just how disgusting and hypocritical they are, by pointing out that these liberals had no problem when Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a pedophile rapist.

That's right, in 2009, Obama's first year in office, he awarded the late gay rights icon Harvey Milk with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. Harvey Milk "dedicated his life to shattering boundaries and challenging assumptions," Obama said during the ceremony. "As one of the first openly gay elected officials in this country, he changed the landscape of opportunity for the nation's gay community. Throughout his life, he fought discrimination with visionary courage and conviction."

Before presenting the award to Milk's nephew, Obama added, "Harvey Milk's voice will forever echo in the hearts of all those who carry forward his timeless message."

Harvey Milk may have been a gay rights icon and one of the first openly gay elected officials in this country, but often left out of his biography by those who choose to celebrate him was the fact that he liked to have sex with underage boys.

One such example of this is Milk's "relationship" with a 16-year-old runaway, Jack Galen McKinley. As told by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts in his 1982 biography of Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street,  “Sixteen-year-old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure… At 33, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him.” Shilts was also a close friend of Milk's and wrote of many of his encounters with teenagers as though there was nothing wrong with them. “Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance abuse problems,” Shilts wrote.

"Having sex with a 16-year-old is statutory rape," explained Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller. "The age of consent in California is eighteen. California’s current statutory rape law was instituted in 1970."

Milk also urged teenager Gerard Dols to run away from home in Minnesota to live in San Francisco, giving him help on how to do so in a letter that he sent Dols. Dols, who did not end up running away to Milk’s city, made the revelation in a 2008 interview, as conservative writer Matt Barber noted.
“Don’t tell your parents,” Milk told Dols.

“Milk was a pederast,” said Bryan Fischer, a host on the American Family Radio network. “A pederast is a man who fancies sex with post-pubescent boys."

But the Presidential Medal of Freedom wasn't the end of Obama's honoring of the sex predator. Under Obama, a postage stamp was dedicated to Harvey Milk, and a Navy ship was named after him as well.

Despite being a sexual predator, Milk is celebrated by the left and Hollywood. Sean Penn portrayed him in the 2008 biopic Milk, and Obama used the office of the presidency to honor him multiple times, even bestowing upon Milk the nation's highest civilian honor.

But liberals are outraged that Trump would dare bestow the same award to Rush Limbaugh?

SOURCE 






Australia: Sandstone statue in Aboriginal Stolen Generation Memorial is vandalised in vile attack causing $50,000 in damage

It is a memorial to a lie.  It should be erased.  Leftists tear down statues to real events and real people.  A statue to a lie should all the more be torn down

The "stolen generation" is a fiction invented by Leftist historians.  White social workers in the '30s did their job and sometimes removed endangered children from severely dysfunctional black families and sometimes fostered the children into white families for their own safety.  THAT is the so called stolen generation

And if a "generation" were removed, there should be thousands ready to tell their story.  There are in fact at most a handful.  The thing is a lie from beginning to end



A Sydney memorial for the indigenous Stolen Generations has been vandalised, with the damage bill estimated to be $50,000.

Police were called to the Australian Botanical Garden at Mount Annan in southwest Sydney on Thursday, after reports a sandstone statue in the Aboriginal Stolen Generation Memorial was deliberately damaged.

Police believe the memorial was targeted between 10am on Wednesday and 10.45am on Thursday.

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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