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It seems to me that the free and instant access to information has cost humanity something important.

It has happened before: Up to the 1400s, humans in general had well-developed memories, and the scholars among us memorized entire manuscripts word for word, and painstakingly accumulated knowledge by deep reading and understanding. Then Gutenberg developed the printing press (in the face of yet another plague on the planet: an attorney stole it from him).

Soon, in the space of a few generations, one no longer needed to remember entire manuscripts worth of knowledge; you can acquire the thing as a book and have it one your shelf. The ability to memorize giant chunks of information, no longer exercised, was lost to most cultures.

But where was it not lost? In a culture that by its nature excluded the printing press and its output. You can see this coming, especially if you happen to know that these printing presses were cleaned and inked with brushes made from hog-bristles.

The Memory of Pigs

Islam, which holds a tremendous antipathy against the pig and all pig-derived products, and since anything they printed would include invocations to Allah, allowing a pig bristle brush to come into contact with that word was intolerable. So, during the 1500s when the “Gutenberg” press spread across most countries, it does not make it into the Islamic world. It wasn’t until 1798 when the press arrived in Alexandria, Egypt — brought by the conquering Napoleon Bonaparte. He used it right away to print propaganda fliers to the Muslims of Alexandria (“Mamluks”) encouraging them to welcome their new masters:

People of Egypt, they have told you that I come to destroy your religion, but do not believe it; in reply I come to restore your rights, punish the usurpers and that I respect God, his prophet and the Qur’an more than the Mamluks. … Thrice happy are those who will be with us! They shall prosper in their fortune and in their rank. Happy are those who will be neutral! They will get to know us over time, and join their ranks with ours. But unhappy, thrice unhappy, are those who shall arm themselves [to fight] for the Mamluks and who shall fight against us! There shall be no hope for them, they shall perish.

This was rendered in horrifically bad Arabic. It worked for a little while, in combination with Bonaparte’s 20-to-1 kill ratio against Egyptian forces, but the French were forced out after a couple of years of battling the Marmuks internally, the Ottoman Empire externally, and their old enemies the British. And the plague, which killed as many French as their human enemies.

In any event, the printing press did not catch on there; its use was sparing indeed and that is still true. Today, the output of first world countries in original printed works is something like 100 times that of Sharia-law-controlled nations, and similar numbers hold for translations of scholarly works from English to local languages.

But … as a result of the scarcity of (and disdain for) printed works, these Islamic cultures retained their ability to memorize. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, what they memorized was usually the Qur’an, the focus of their culture. Islam has various ranks for people who have memorized all or part of this book. This can be true even if they don’t speak Arabic; they are singing the verses phonetically, like Abba did with their early hits.

The Shallows

Now we see a great information-distribution change again, with cellphones and laptops making access to any sort of information trivial and nearly instantaneous. The net result is a further shallowing of human intellectual ability. Essentially, not only have we lost memorization ability now, we have largely lost the ability to learn. Why learn something if you can look up anything you need to know? This progresses to a lack of desire and even lack of ability to look it up. Why bother? The book The Shallows by Nicholas Carr describes the problem and provides lots of evidence.

And of course, what we are being taught in universities augments the “why bother” message. Classical literature, philosophy, science? Those are the work of “dead white males” and without value. History, especially history of America? America is a racist nation, and without value. Study activism, the plight of the oppressed, social justice, environmental justice. Indoctrination into those topics is now part of a children’s book you read to your two- and three-year-olds.

In this way, we are losing our humanity, our ability to deal with life as it normally is, ignoring the real possibility of a serious challenge. We are raising generations who know nothing of who we are and how we got here, and who are taught to run to safe spaces instead of matching our ideas against the reality of the world.

This means, in practice, a great reduction in understanding once again. And that bodes great ill for societies around the world.

A Solution

I told my staff for nearly half a century: Don’t bring me a problem without offering at least one solution. So, here is a proposal — charter schools. But we don’t have much time.

Charter schools  in a free-market education system must compete for your business. They must show results better than public education systems. This is an extremely low bar, of course, and many people with the resources to do it have their children in charter schools already.

But to get the public education versus charter schools on a fair footing, a voucher system needs to be employed. Once charter schools are teaching history, science, the value of learning, government schools will be forced to do so as well, or lose the revenue stream from the vouchers.

But the time frame is short. There are so many young parents that have already been indoctrinated into identity politics that not enough of them, now parents, might value a real education. We can’t force it, it must be voluntary.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)

Originally published at DeHavelle.com. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been annoyed for years now at the identification of American conservatives with the color red.

The connection of particular colors to the two major US political parties was inconsistent prior to the late 1990s, though the parties had existed for well over a century by that time. As far back as the 1888 national elections, the Republicans were blue and the Democrats red.

This was used off and on for most of the last century. In the 1980s, Reagan’s landslide 44-state win made the electoral map almost entirely blue, causing NBC’s David Brinkley to describe the map as being as blue as “a suburban swimming pool“) Even in 2004, the color pattern was not quite stabilized; articles printed in late 2003 and early 2004 might use red for Democrats. But this was fairly rare; the 2000 election was the first time the major networks seem to have agreed on a color scheme, and it eventually became stuck.

It’s stuck in the wrong place, it seems to me. As the Times put it 2004:

To many, this palette represents an ignorant (or perhaps intentional) reversal of international tradition, which often associates red with left-leaning parties and blue with the right. ”It’s weird, is all,” wrote a blogger at dailykos.com, a political Web journal. ”I’d like some accountability if people are going to start messing with cultural symbolism willy-nilly.”

The cultural symbolism did indeed get reversed. Around the world (and especially in Europe), red has been used pretty consistently for the leftist/liberal parties, and blue for the right side/conservatives. It was during the US national election of 2000 that the term “red state” got coined and connected to Republicans, and even four years previously the color coding had been inconsistent, with the donkey and the elephant representing the parties instead.

As the left makes more and more obvious their connection with, and influence by, the communist and socialist groups, the color clashes can be jarring. Here, for example, you see the communists and unions (not quite a redundant phrase) marching together, and the union leaders are carrying the bright red communist flag.

Lenin and Che Guevara were popular images. The teachers’ unions wear bright red shirts “in solidarity with [their] socialist brothers and sisters,” says their newsletter.

They are hardly advertising their connection to conservative politics. (As an aside, I remember when teachers could teach math, science and English. Now it’s “Peace and Justice” — and the materials they use are profanity-riddled attacks on the United States.)

I’d certainly like to see the red-blue color pattern reversed. Let the left have the red back, as they have used it since the 1800s. I’d darken the conservative blue to resemble that of the US star field, while staying away from union purples.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)

I’ve been annoyed for years now at the identification of American conservatives with the color red.( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at DeHavelle.com. You can comment here or there.

There is a difference between the US political left and right in the area of tolerance of ideas. The recent Kavanaugh confirmation circus is merely the most recent illustration of that difference.

In general, the right argues vehemently against the left’s ideas, but does not advocate blocking them. For example, while many conservatives are looking forward to the CNN and the New York Times’s business failure, and take a certain grim delight in the poor performance of far left media such as MSNBC with the American public, we don’t want them shut down just for saying what they say. 

Suppressing the opposition

On the left, this issue is seen very differently as a general thing. The left spends millions of dollars, and millions of phone calls, tweets, letters and emails, trying to get spokespeople for the right shut down. I’ve been a subscriber to one of those efforts, “Media Matters for America,” for more than a decade, and I have noted that they are quick to resort to false information to advance their narrative. The Soros-funded operation makes no secret that they want Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dan Bongino and others off the air forever.  And to eliminate even blogs like mine, one of the goals of the Fairness Doctrine.

This is not new. John Kerry years ago challenged the news media (largely leftist already) to block ideas from the political right. Similarly, far-left economist Paul Krugman called for conservative views to be censored from news reports. Krugman’s take is that the idea of compromise is itself an evil: “No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.”

If you were to ask a typical American a month ago which political party or ideology identifies with the idea of “tolerance,” most would answer “the Democrats” or “liberals” or “progressives” — and yet, these notions of eliminating opposition don’t seem to jive with this. Nor do several other aspects of the left’s behavior in the US:

• While many on the right oppose the redefinition of marriage to include gay marriage, the left will attack and destroy the careers and livelihood of gays that don’t agree with them politically. The problem they face is that exposing a gay person working for a conservative does not generally result in problems; conservatives are tolerant.


• The left has become the home of racist jokes in the US, placing stereotypical anti-minority humor and slurs in the media if the targets are minorities that don’t agree with the left politically.


• Women are the targets of continuous sexist attacks by the left if they aren’t following leftist ideology. And like blacks, the left will deny your identity if you exhibit a diversity from their prescribed opinion. As was said to Senator Collins days ago: “You may have female parts but you are no woman.”


• Religious people are under siege by the left, unless they are leftists/Muslims of course.


• And the very rare conservatives invited to speak on campus (that ratio is more than 15:1 against) are regularly attacked by leftist mobs, who cannot stand the notion that ideas they disagree with might be heard.

So how is it that the people that have branded themselves as “tolerant” behave this way? How is it that the woman involved in the harassment of Glenn Beck and his wife at a theater would write “We live our lives intolerant only of those who don’t tolerate.” Why are those chasing out Ted Cruz and his wife so smug in declaring that he deserved it for being intolerant?

Doesn’t that sort of doublethink give them pause? No. And that’s been true for about half a century.

Academic Freedom is History

Understanding the history here provides clues to this attitude. For decades now, universities have striven to eliminate conservatives in academia; the ratio now in many disciplines is on the order of 30 to 1 in favor of liberals. This is despite a tradition, going back over more than a century, of explicit bylaws requiring that education be taught, and knowledge pursued, independently of politics. For example, here is Rule APM 0-10 of the University of California, adopted in 1934 and quoted in part:

The function of the university is to seek and to transmit knowledge and to train students in the processes whereby truth is to be made known. To convert, or to make converts, is alien and hostile to this dispassionate duty. Where it becomes necessary in performing this function of a university, to consider political, social, or sectarian movements, they are dissected and examined, not taught, and the conclusion left, with no tipping of the scales, to the logic of the facts…

Essentially the freedom of a university is the freedom of competent persons in the classroom. In order to protect this freedom, the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda.

This rule is part of an essential concept: that knowledge and teaching should be fair, impartial, fact-based, and without propaganda.

Who could argue with these ideas?

The leftists in charge of modern universities could, and did. Herbert Marcuse, a very influential Marxist professor at Brandeis and part of the Frankfurt School supporting Marx’s ideas, wrote a paper in 1965 called “Repressive Tolerance,” in which he advocated the new concept of “revolutionary tolerance.” Here’s his entire essay. And much more about him, written by non-leftists and collected (without much opposition offered) by a member of his family.

His basic point regarding tolerance is that “society cannot be indiscriminate where the pacification of existence, where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, certain behavior cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude.”

Thus, he makes his case that “revolutionary tolerance” solves what he describes earlier as a problem: “Tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery.” These things are, in practice, anything that impedes the advent of Marxism.

Art, Not-Art and Anti-Art

Along the way, he adamantly states that art cannot be repressed. And yet, Marxists have been quick to eliminate any art that they thought did not support the Communist State. How does Marcuse get there? He breaks “art” into “art, not-art and anti-art.” The latter two, you see, can and should be repressed. Of course, his people will make the decisions on what to tolerate.

For he argues that to do otherwise is to allow “Tolerance toward that which is radically evil.” And the repression of speech and acts is entirely appropriate in “liberalist theory”: Tolerance was ‘to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties’” — and only Marxist liberals are mature, of course. Everyone else must be repressed, because “There is a sense in which truth is the end of liberty, and liberty must be defined and confined by truth.” No Marxist truth, no liberty, because the most important thing is the chance of a Marxist peace. It follows, then, that “Consequently, it is also possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance [of peace], and those which would do the opposite. Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.”

Censorship is a Prerequisite for Marxist Peace

Suppression of opposing “opinions, actions, and movements” is a prerequisite to the freedom he envisioned. And his notions here have been adopted across the United States. As a result, the remaining conservatives have been steadily losing the struggle for real tolerance and academic freedoms in favor of “political correctness” and activism by professors.

Ward Churchill was one of many hundreds of like-minded professors pursuing this new “revolutionary tolerance. And in Berkeley, where that Rule APM 0-10 above held sway and demanded an impartial handling of the truth, the Berkeley Senate voted to get rid of it, in 2003. Activism in the classroom is not merely accepted, it is actively encouraged.

Much more about this background is visible in David Horowitz’s “The Professors”: I recommend it.

Internal Rifts

There’s a gigantic danger here for freedom, and even the Left is not immune to its effects. It arises from the notion discussed here at length, that “tolerance,” as the Left sees it, involves censoring those who disagree with you because they are not “progressive” in their views of promoting a Marxist global peace.

But when you declare intolerance of points that disagree with you, this does not sit neatly across the left-right divide. It seems Marcuse didn’t quite anticipate this. He explicitly called for repression of violence and speech based on political position, and support of violence and speech if you were on the Left: “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”

What’s the trouble? The diversity that the Left does not like at all: Diversity of opinion. On the left, and on the right, there are many points of view — and the de facto practice of intolerance can irritate others who are nominally on your own side.

I saw signs of this internal conflict years ago, when the leftist leaders of the City of San Francisco have attempted to shut down the communications of leftist protesters . The escalating intolerance for anyone who disagrees at all has resulted in the #WalkAway phenomenon.

The Left has become so narrowly focused on their anti-American, anti-individual, anti-tolerant narrative that they are beginning to “define out” of the movement many who might otherwise have sympathized with them.

They hate President Trump, they hate conservatives, they hate America’s founders … and they are evidencing that they are quite willing to hate themselves as well for any infractions. The coming social war seems likely to be interesting to watch, at least.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)

There is a difference between the US political left and right in the area of tolerance of ideas. The recent Kavanaugh confirmation circus is merely the most recent illustration of that difference.

In general, the right argues vehemently against the left’s ideas, but does not advocate blocking them. For example, while many conservatives are looking forward to the CNN and the New York Times’s business failure, and take a certain grim delight in the poor performance of far left media such as MSNBC with the American public, we don’t want them shut down just for saying what they say. ( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at DeHavelle.com. You can comment here or there.

The presumption of evidence is being touted as uniquely American or a founding tenet of Western thought. It is important indeed to Western jurisprudence, but its provenance spans thousands of years. Wikipedia notes how the Romans expressed it: “ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat” (“the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies”).

Even in Islam, a similar principle is held: “Avert the prescribed punishment by rejecting doubtful evidence.” Imam ibn Hajar’s Bulugh al-Maram, Hadith 1290.

Do such notions apply outside of the domain of law? Should they? Yes to both, I strongly assert.

What’s the problem?

If the idea is as widely accepted as the above suggests, what is the problem? The problem is that the presumption of innocence does not apply in socialist and other tyrannical regimes, nor in tyrannical monarchies and dictatorships. For example, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Lavrentiy Beria (Putin’s predecessor) famously said: “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” The Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) of Germany similarly used the presumption of guilt (and no trial needed) to get rid of inconvenient people by the millions. To this day, the expression “Germanic presumption” refers to the presumption that an accused person is of course guilty.

Saddam Hussein’s “Socialist Republic of Iraq” (it’s been renamed), Cuba, Venezuela, China, North Korea, and the rest of a dozen socialist tyrannies and many other dictatorships all find the presumption of innocence troubling. They need free reign to jail, torture or kill people they perceive as threats to their ends, and they have the power to make this stick.

In the United States, we still prize the presumption of innocence, though we do great harm to it through “trial by media” and other non-judicial actions. Leading, national Democrats are now increasingly insisting that it no longer applies, and have thus stepped onto the path of tyranny.

But for the rest of us, outside of a court of law, how should we consider the concept of “doubtful evidence”? Let’s look at three cases in the news now, and see if the evidence is doubtful, substantial, or confessed.

Cory Booker

In Senator Booker’s 1992 Stanford column, he describes (and thus admits to)  a teen aged groping of a drunk female friend:

New Year’s Eve 1984 I will never forget. I was 15. As the ball dropped, I leaned over to hug a friend and she met me instead with an overwhelming kiss. As we fumbled upon the bed, I remember debating my next “move” as if it were a chess game. With the “Top Gun” slogan ringing in my head, I slowly reached for her breast. After having my hand pushed away once, I reached my “mark.

This is truly a confession, and it raises a very high probability that he was guilty of this sexual assault. It’s not 100%, because there are people that falsely confess, and people (especially men) who brag of sexual conquests they never achieved. In this case, it is certainly fair to adjudge Booker as guilty of this crime. Interestingly, had he actually been prosecuted and convicted of it, the records would have very likely been expunged because of his age.

Keith Ellison

Here, there is evidence is more substantial. It includes a 911 call from one former girlfriend in 2005 to medical records from a second girlfriend in 2017 and multiple witnesses to her alleged abuse at the hands of Ellison.

This is fairly strong evidence, with contemporary law enforcement and medical records and witnesses. Still, it is not completely damning. The medical records are not about injuries caused by violence; they relate the patient’s abusing relationship but it is her own story with no other direct evidence. The 911 call from before does not indicate direct violence (though she felt threatened), though she does indicate an assault on her (or his?) mother. The witnesses do lend credibility, but they are relatives of the girlfriend and thus motivated to tell/spin the story a particular way.

In short, this one is open, and really needs to be pursued judicially without more. Clearly he’s had two very unhappy relationships, but that alone is not a crime. I understand now that this is being pursued, but it is likely to be a partisan, buddy pursuit which may not be satisfying. For now, he still carries the presumption of innocence.

Brett Kavanaugh

Here’s the largest one in the news, of course. Famously, the allegation consists of a completely uncorroborated assertion from 35 or maybe 36 years ago, and the fact that even the year isn’t known, let alone the place or other participants, drains this story’s already thin credibility. Every person Christine Blasey has named as a witness, including her best friend at the time, denies her account. And she has recently demonstrated just how terrible her memory is, and the fact that she told her story to no one for three decades.

There’s now an FBI investigation under way. But who will they talk to? Each of the witnesses named by Blasey has already stated in sworn affidavits that they cannot back her assertions. They can ask “are you really, really sure?” They can ask the polygraph operator why he performed such a non-standard, essentially useless procedure. Maybe they can illustrate the tremendous partisan biases of Blasey, her attorneys, handlers, and advisers. They can find out why she lied under oath about being a psychologist. But those things don’t directly refute her story.

Against this doubtful evidence are the assertions of all of those, male and female and including former girlfriends from the same time period, who swear that Brett Kavanaugh is nothing like this, and that his behavior toward women was and is exemplary. What does he get for such an extraordinary life? USA Today ran an article alleging that he was a pedophile. “Trial by media” indeed.

Giving Christine Blasey every benefit of the doubt, we can only conclude that — whatever happened to her — through her actions over more than a third of a century she has forever lost the opportunity to do anything about it. Unless … I understand that two men have volunteered that they, not Kavanaugh, are who Blasey is talking about. Very strange.

And Brett Kavanaugh is still innocent, and rightfully presumed so.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (@DeHavelle)

The presumption of evidence is being touted as uniquely American or a founding tenet of Western thought. It is important indeed to Western jurisprudence, but its provenance spans thousands of years. Wikipedia notes how the Romans expressed it: “ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat” (“the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies”).

Even in Islam, a similar principle is held: “Avert the prescribed punishment by rejecting doubtful evidence.” Imam ibn Hajar’s Bulugh al-Maram, Hadith 1290.

Do such notions apply outside of the domain of law? Should they? Yes to both, I strongly assert.( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at DeHavelle.com. You can comment here or there.

Schrödinger’s cat is famously in a box in an unknown state — dead or alive. The cat’s state is not “partially dead” — it is not dead in any part until the box is opened and the fact is known.

The American presumption of innocence should be in some respect similar. When an allegation is made, the accused is not “partially guilty.” He or she is not guilty at all until and unless evidence is introduced, and adjudged, to demonstrate that guilt.

I’ve recently encountered the yearbooks of Chistine Blasey-Ford, snagged just before the school scrubbed them from the online records. An examination of these is instructive, and it is instantly obvious why the culture of her school needed to be hidden.

https://cultofthe1st.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-christine-blasey-fords-high-school_19.html?m=1

The evidence seems to show that, at the time, Chrissy Blasey was a good time party girl very much in tune with the rest of the girls at her high school: sexual predators and underage drinkers. The yearbook describes their favorite pastime (partying) this way:( Read the rest of this entry »Collapse )

Originally published at DeHavelle.com. You can comment here or there.

The introduction of this sexual assault allegation at the last minute is an interesting strategy. It has several implications, but the biggest one answers this question:

Why did Senator Dianne Feinstein wait so long to bring out this allegation?

According to her Senate challenger Kevin De León (apparently a Chinese-Guatemalan pretending to be Mexican), she had been sitting on this letter “for three months.” If it is true, it would have put an end to the Kavanaugh nomination months ago. But she admits having this in July, which could have (if true) produced the same result.

Holding the introduction (and keeping it anonymous) until the last possible minute prevents people from thoroughly investigating the charge. Had it been introduced earlier, much more would be known about its likely veracity. But here’s a key point: Dianne Feinstein has known of the accuser and her allegations for months, and she has the staff to check out such things. She apparently knows that it had to be held back.

(Speaking of her staff, Senator Feinstein hired her Chinese driver/emissary to the Chinese community right about the time that President Clinton was being forced to return millions of dollars of campaign contributions to the Communist Chinese and their cutouts. Some 96 people connected to Communist China (including on Clinton’s staff) fled the country to avoid prosecution and/or subpoenas. Some that were caught did jail time, and the Democratic National Committee was forced to pay legal fees for at least one of them. I wonder to what extent the new Senator’s driver/spy was connected.)

We do know some things about the Blasey-Ford allegation, and aspects of the story that are contradictory.

“The accuser wants to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation.”

Well, no. When the accuser, a leftist California college professor, saw that the charge was not destroying President Trump’s nominee, she immediately went public.

“Blasey-Ford is demanding that the FBI complete their investigation before she testifies.”

This makes no sense, as her testimony would be the first thing that an investigator would take. Right now, how would any law enforcement investigation pursue this? Talk to witnesses as the party? She doesn’t remember which party. Find out what else was happening among the accused at that date? She doesn’t remember the date.

This is rather absurd. But the big issue is:

Why the delay?

It seems highly likely that Feinstein delayed because she did not believe that Blasey-Ford’s story would check out. Thus, she could not afford to give investigators (and bloggers!) enough time to check her story. The “now demanding an investigation” is only to push the confirmation vote back, she hopes to the other side of the election. At that point, she doesn’t care if the accuser’s story is real or not. Much like the Mueller investigation.

Sadly, we may lose Judge Kavanaugh anyway, because of Mark Judge’s book and Kavanaugh’s own 2014 speech, as I recently wrote about.

But we shouldn’t!

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle