Coddling of the American Mind

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Everyone I talked with before the vote said that they were going to vote to leave. I admit to not talking about it with young people.

 

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i have. Chatted to young UK people about no longer being part of the EU

is about work and travel mostly for them in the first instance

and being part of something larger than the island home of their parents and grandparents, who are by and large, mono-cultural in their outlook

+

in my extended family we host young people from all round the world. High school age, they come and stay for a semester or a year even sometimes. From all over. Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe incl. the UK

in all of them is this sense that they are part of something larger than just their homelands

we currently hosting a girl from Catalan aged 17. Speaks 3 languages now fluently. Catalan, Spanish and English. I asked what she thought of the Brexit and her reply was that she felt sorry for all her friends who live in England. Before coming to us she spend a year in England

another person we have is from Brazil. 16 years old. Portugese, Spanish, 2 local tribal languages, and now English. he is as baffled as she is

with them and those from the UK as well, they want to know why their parents would do this to them ?

if the answer is: Nobody asked me if I wanted join so I left first chance I got, and took my children with me, bc they dont know what a castle truly means to an Englishman

then they are not going to be satisfied with that answer, if thats all you have to offer them

[Phil Deakins]

I have no intention of satisfying anyone. I merely stated my reason for voting to leave. If a government wants to sign away my rights, I want to be asked before they do it. That's all.

The borderless travel in the EU is something that crossed my mind. It occured to me that many people would have voted to stay in on purely selfish grounds; i.e. the borderless freedom to travel anywhere in the EU will be gone. I.e. holidays (vacations) will be affected. I don't consider that a good reason to stay in. Also, they can still have those holidays like they used to before. It'll be just be slightly less convenient, that's all. The freedom to work anywhere in the EU affects so few British people that it isn't really worth basing the future of a country on, imo. The UK is a nett loser in that respect; i.e. far more people from the EU come here to work than the other way round. And, frankly, I don't care if a tiny number of people would have liked the freedom to go and work somewhere else, but will no longer have that freedom. It's such a small issue that it's not worth basing a whole country's future on. They'll still be able to work in the EU and elsewhere. It only means that they'll have to get the appropriate visas. I've no desire to determine my country's future on the inconvenience of a tiny number of people.

The sense of being part of something larger costs the UK a fortune, plus the continual deterioration of self-government. It doesn't appeal to me, and, it seems, to most British people. The sense of being a part of something bigger is simply not worth the cost. Not only that, but that bigger thing is in all sorts of trouble, so why would any country want to be part of it - except those lesser ones that are huge beneficiaries, of course. By 'lesser' I mean countries that don't have big economies and struggle to improve things for their people. The UK has the 4th largest economy in the world. We get milked by the EU.

Those young people you talk about have never known anything different. They probably imagine that the UK will be on its knees and struggling to survive in the world when we've left. But they are wrong. I wouldn't blame them if they imagine that, because being in the EU is all they've ever known, but that doesn't make them correct.

 

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

... They probably imagine that the UK will be on its knees and struggling to survive in the world when we've left. But they are wrong. I wouldn't blame them if they imagine that ...

 

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(:

the latest FT report is pretty interesting:

"The British economy turned in a steady performance in the first half of 2016. Data for the third quarter - which will capture the post-referendum period - is not out until the Autumn. Monthly data so far has been mixed, with consumers in a more confident mood than businesses."

[Phil Deakins]

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wherorangi wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

 

... They probably imagine that the UK will be on its knees and struggling to survive in the world when we've left. But they are wrong. I wouldn't blame them if they imagine that ...

 

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(:

the latest FT report is pretty interesting:

"The British economy turned in a steady performance in the first half of 2016. Data for the third quarter - which will capture the post-referendum period - is not out until the Autumn. Monthly data so far has been mixed,

with consumers in a more confident mood than businesses

."

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It's pretty much meaningless at the moment. We're still in the EU and will be for some time. Opinions are bound to vary. It's the ongoing future when we're out of it that I am certain will be as just fine as it was before we got into it. Some businesses have no idea yet how things will pan out, and neither do we consumers.

I do remember that New Zealand almost desperately wanted us not to join the Common Market, because it would greatly affect their lamb sales to us, but I understand it turned out not to be a problem. It's too easy to imagine negative scenarios, which is what some people do. It's just as easy to imagine positive scenarios, which is more in keeping with what I'm doing. In the end, we'll all survive without much in the way of noticable difference - except that we (the country) may be able to afford important things, like the health service, better - and we won't be badly affected by the stupidity of the euro. We (our politicians) were sensible enough join the euro, but it's been on its knees and, if it failed, it would affect us if we are in the EU.

If you think about it, the strongest economies in the EU group of countries support the weakest, so some are nett gainers and some are nett losers. All the countries cannot be nett gainers, and we are one of those. Of course there will be negative effects for some and positive effects for others, so opinions as to the overall effect are relatively meaningless at the moment.

[Freya Mokusei]

Haha, the forum literally won't let me talk about Brexit, no matter how much you folks want me to.

Everything goes to unmoderated, and there are no likely triggers. I might keep trying, but for now I'm out of energy.

Sorry!

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ETA: No, sorry, it's infuriating and I've now wasted two hours.

[Phil Deakins]

I don't understand that. I saw you'd posted when I replied to wherorangi, but when I posted that reply, and got back to the page, your post had gone. Unfortunately, I didn't read it before I replied to wherorangi.

[Pamela Galli]

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wherorangi wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:

When a professor says the word indigenous should not be capitalized, should people howl for his head on a stake? 

 

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ever since you linked to this, I been wanting to address it. But I end up get outrage, so I have to stop typing (:

i will have a go now, bc I think is important

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i am a indigenous person. Is a category. There is no type of "I"ndigenous

people who do this are often well-meaning, but even more often they have no idea how insulting this actually is

they are all wrapped in a desire to somehow help these unfortunate Indigenous peoples, by changing the way they are labelled, to raise "A"wareness, so these "U"fortunates can be "S"een to be "S"pecial, so "S"omething can be "D"one

what this kinda labelling does, is to practically create even more division than there already is. There is zero benefit in this for anyone other than making the person(s) doing it get the fuzzies

thats a real big help. Woohoo! we been leveled up from being called Indians to Indigenouses

i am not Indigenous. I am Ngapuhi

and then as Ngapuhi (or as Apache or Cherokee or Sioux or whichever) I would like to discuss with you the issues regarding some breaches of the agreement/treaty/contract that we entered into in good faith with you guys, as you did with us. With the view we can reach a resolution, and move on together

there is nothing special about either of us actually doing this

and I and lots of others like me would much rather we did this, than be levelled up to be the "P"oster "C"hild of the "U"fortunate

 

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I will have to do some reading up on this, but no doubt when real aggressions are committed against you, it puts the micro variety into perspective. Capitalization does not by comparison seem such a big deal. 

Not sure who you are addressing in you post, since my European ancestors had immigrated from Europe by the 18th c., and in any case I am part indigenous. My relatives were forced on the Trail of Tears, so I am both us and them. 

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

All the countries cannot be nett gainers.

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On average, over the timespan and extent of humanity, this has probably never been true, unless microbes or climate were involved. Over smaller periods of time and smaller areas there are always examples. Individual people live over small periods of time in small areas. It's not surprising that colors our thinking, and not just the conscious thinking, but instinct as well. The challenge is to keep the short term/short range thinking from overwhelming the larger trend. I'm hopeful.

From the Brexit news coverage I saw, the split between young and old on the vote seemed more driven by immigration and job mobility (as wherorangi notes) than anything else. I'd expect a correlation there with age, as the young have had more direct and positive experience with immigrants, and nothing else to compare it to (as you noted). While the kids are going to school together, the parents are competing for jobs.

If each generation sends more of their children to school for longer, education might be just an inverse proxy for age, and the actual educational level of an individual may have no bearing on their attitudes. I doubt that's true, but we'd need to see statistics for educational level within narrow age brackets to tease out the actual correlation between vote and education.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

I agree universities shouldn't be participating in reducing thoughtful discussion, but disagree that this is what U of C are doing. Drawing a line in the sand and writing an angry headline is on the useless side of possibole actions. I'd be interested to see if U of C are doing

anything else

to attempt to defuse the very real levels of anger and division felt across their student body.

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I haven't actually read about what the U of C is doing, so my condoning it is uninformed and I'm looking for something to read about it (Pamela probably provided a link, but I've not found it).

I do agree that overreacting to a perceived threat just exacerbates the situation. I am not convinced that's not happening (couldn't find a better way to word that).

While Googling around, I found this...

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/

Stenner is now on my reading list.

It's not surprising to me that rising tension, some driven by reality and some driven by a worldwide information dissemination system that favors emotion, could amplify micro into macro.

[Pamela Galli]

Derek had posted a link about U of C but I can't find it now. here is the NYT article:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/27/us/university-of-chicago-strikes-back-against-campus-political-correctness.html

Other links in that article lead to more examples of demands for suppression of speech.

Also, some say the issue the U of C is addressing does not exist.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

While Googling around, I found this...

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/

Stenner is now on my reading list.

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Authoritarianism is a central pillar of my study, and has been for the last couple of years (same reasoning as Stenner: "intolerance is not a thing of the past, it is very much a thing of the future."). Of particular interest to me is how authoritarians buckle-under when they meet someone more authoritarian than they are. Stenner seems to agree with this (I don't off-hand remember if I've read her before, but it's fantastically familiar).

It lines up with what I said in the last lines of my earlier post, that the nationalists/traditionalists objections come from the same internal mechanisms as those they hate - they become 'triggered' into authoritarian mindsets when they perceive a threat to something they want to protect, and arguments come from a place of emotion, rather than logic.

It's a scary effect, and not one that secular Western culture is quite ready to tackle (it's an area that institutionalised religion does okay at, though unsurprising as it's part of the same animal). My perspective is that these feelings, the need to protect something, are based off of principles of artificial scarcity and politics of fear (e.g., "I need all of this land", "this land must stay mine"). To remove those mechanisms, though, means turning a lot of established systems on their head.

Fascinating stuff.

 

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I do remember that New Zealand almost desperately wanted us not to join the Common Market, because it would greatly affect their lamb sales to us, but I understand it turned out not to be a problem

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.

it actually did not turn out well. Being cut out of the UK market

within 18 years we went from 1 NZD could buy 1.33 USD down to 1 NZD could buy 42 cents USD. We couldnt a trade deal with anyone. Not the US, not Europe, not anywhere. Only Australia saved us. Has only been since we got a trade deal with China that we have been able to recover about half of what we had prior to 1966

looks like we may not be getting a trade agreement with the US now, given whats happening there at the moment. If not then nothing changes for us as far as the West is concerned. We will still have quotas imposed on us by our 'friends'

when England is abandoned by Scotland, as it will be, and is cut out of access to Europe, who is going to buy your stuff ? What little you still do make ? 

Your economy is 78% based on services now, of which 41% are financial services exported to the EU. Given that you will no longer have free trade access to Europe, who is going to buy them ? The USA ? Russia ? Africa ? Us ?  

After London, Edinburgh is the largest financial center in Britain. Why would the 400 internatiional banks that currently maintain offices in London, given that their market is the EU, remain in London ? They speak english in Edinburgh. They speak good english in Frankfurt as well

i dont think anyone in Britain has any idea really of whats coming. The Empire is gone. the Commonwealth is gone in any meaningful sense. The EU has now gone also. Scotland will be gone to.  What does England then have to offer the world, once the banks and other financial services have packed up and gone as well ?

Tourism, and thats about it. The British pound be worth about 60 cents USD in about 20 years from now. A cheap holiday place for foreigners. Competing with all the other cheap places round the world

Chances are Phil that in 20 years time, you wont be around to see it. The legacy you and those of your age, have left for your children

 

[wherorangi]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Not sure who you are addressing in you post, since my European ancestors had immigrated from Europe by the 18th c., and in any case I am part indigenous. My relatives were forced on the Trail of Tears, so I am both us and them. 

 

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i was addressing the "I" people. We kinda agree about that. I just had a different perspective on it

and if I was on the faculty of a university and some of the students thought it was a good and helpful idea to capitalise a word as if that would somehow be a win for the people now capitalised, then I would explain to these students that they are not actually helping anyone when they do this

[Madelaine McMasters]

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wherorangi wrote:

Chances are Phil that in 20 years time, you wont be around to see it. The legacy you and those of your age, have left for your children

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Amongst my elderly friends, there's a dissapointing "The world is going to hell, I'm glad I won't be around to see it" outlook.

"What about your grandchildren?"

"I don't want to think about it, they'll have to deal with it".

I could almost see myself favoring a retooling of voting that weights each person's vote by the amount of time they've got left to deal with the aftermath. But then I'd have to discount the young for their inexperience, and me for favoring this idea at all.

 

[Phil Deakins]

I didn't know that our joing the Common Market caused that in N.Z. I did know that you sell to China but I didn't know that that came a long time afterwards.

The people of Scotland voted to stay in the UK. They'd be silly not to. The land size is significant when compared to England, but it only has a very small population. If it left the UK, it would be out of the EU and on its own.

What makes you think that the UK will stop trading with the EU countries? It may even end up with a very similar agreement that we all had in the Common Market. Talks will be taking place soon. And what makes you think that we won't continue trading with the rest of the world? There's no reason for us to stop that.

Yes, the Empire has gone, which is a good thing, and the British Commonwealth has gone too - changed into The Commonwealth. I don't see your point in bringing them up.

You paint a picture of doom and gloom ahead for the UK. It's just not going to be like that

ETA: I hope I'll still be around to see the UK 20 years from now, but I may not be.

[Freya Mokusei]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Amongst my elderly friends, there's a dissapointing "The world is going to hell, I'm glad I won't be around to see it" outlook.

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Yeah. Very much this. (But also not at all this)

I have a barreload of respect for many older folks. They've made compromises and decisions I'll never have to make, they've dealt with hardships I'll probably never see - that I probably can't even create a context for. Somehow they hold up in the wind, despite so much time having been spent trying to tear them down.

But I've seen this sentiment a lot - when I first started working in my career (6.5-ish years ago) an adanced-in-age coworker told me that I "should be learning Chinese" (I think he meant Cantonese) instead of applying for British jobs related to the engineering industry. When the referendum came, company policy was to hedge bets - buy plenty of foreign currency, hope to ride out the worst of it in the short term - the long term will likely be someone elses' problem.

So to counterbalance this mindset, I've experienced some of the opposite. I had a bit in my still-buried post about this concept as it related to Brexit, I'll try and include:-

"My group (folks my age or a little older) all voted in, along with myself. My parents/relations (and those of my peers), members of my old church, a handful of academics that I'm familiar with - all voted with me too, many asked me - specifically - how they should vote. This might be an effect some of you saw - since the decision wouldn't affect people who've now retired, they wanted to vote in a relevant direction for the youth. I am told I make well-reasoned arguments, and my band of listeners grew after the last UK election, during which I was highly involved in political works (raising awareness in general, I've never been interested in party lines)."

I don't say this as someone who thinks all people above a certain age should've done this (some my age would go that far), just that it was a very endearing thing to see and I appreciated what I saw going on around me. There's valid, individual reasons for older people to have chosen to retain their votes as well, but acknowledging the likely timeframe required to see the change was more long-term thinking than I thought most of the UK electorate had.

I found this a lot more complicated than the "old vs. young" numbers shown in the demographics. I don't think age goes far enough in explaining why this split occured so deeply within UK society. (Although Bill Maher recently aired

)

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

The people of Scotland voted to stay in the UK.

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That vote preceded the Brexit vote. I haven't heard much about Scotland since shortly after Brexit, but at that time the pundits thought Scotland might reverse course if the referendum were brought up again.

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

What makes you think that the UK will stop trading with the EU countries? It may even end up with a very similar agreement that we all had in the Common Market. Talks will be taking place soon. And what makes you think that we won't continue trading with the rest of the world? There's no reason for us to stop that.

 

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you wont get free trade access. You need pay attention to what the French and Germans are saying, they are not going to give you free trade. You will be quotaed, and tariffed on what quotas you do get from them

and thats what kills you in the trade sense. Quotas and tariffs. 41% of your current economic output, England is not going to get that free anymore. And there is no other market to pick that up, at the zero tarriff non-quota rates you have had

eta; typsos

[Pamela Galli]

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wherorangi wrote:

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Not sure who you are addressing in you post, since my European ancestors had immigrated from Europe by the 18th c., and in any case I am part indigenous. My relatives were forced on the Trail of Tears, so I am both us and them. 

 

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i was addressing the "I" people. We kinda agree about that. I just had a different perspective on it

and if I was on the faculty of a university and some of the students thought it was a good and helpful idea to capitalise a word as if that would somehow be a win for the people now capitalised, then I would explain to these students that they are not actually helping anyone when they do this

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Ah, I see.

 

You made this suggestion before, and the video and description of consequences for making a reasoned argument in this article  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-is-not-for-coddling/2015/11/10/6def5706-87db-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html?utm_term=.e188c37ef9ba  explain why it has not thus far been a solution. Because this is not about making reasoned arguments, it is about shouting down and shutting up any attempt to do so.

The video really makes me cringe.

This is the Atlantic article about the Yale kerfluffle and its sad outcome: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

 

Several states when voting on the constitution specifically included in their approval that at such time as the union was no longer satisfactory, they could withdraw.

Everything you mentioned before refers to what states  can do while they are IN the union, nothing you mention prevents them from leaving the union itself.

 

 

 

 

 

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Yes, the Empire has gone, which is a good thing, and the British Commonwealth has gone too - changed into The Commonwealth. I don't see your point in bringing them up.

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when Britain chose to join the Common Market, it overnight pretty much killed all the trade between the Commonwealth nations. Britain was the piviot and the glue that held all of that together

was not just us that it affected. Canada, Australia, and all the others were cut out as well.  Was quite hard for everyone when that happened. Canada and Australia were able to pretty much go straight over and partner up with the US. The rest of us being small just kinda got forgotten

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Historical Ignorance

The victors of war write its history in order to cast themselves in the most favorable light. That explains the considerable historical ignorance about our war of 1861 and panic over the Confederate flag. To create better understanding, we have to start a bit before the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the war between the colonies and Great Britain. Its first article declared the 13 colonies “to be free, sovereign and independent states.” These 13 sovereign nations came together in 1787 as principals and created the federal government as their agent. Principals have always held the right to fire agents. In other words, states held a right to withdraw from the pact — secede.

During the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it, saying, “A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”

In fact, the ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution never would have been ratified if states thought they could not regain their sovereignty — in a word, secede.

On March 2, 1861, after seven states seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that read, “No state or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S.

Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?

On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”

Both Northern Democratic and Republican Parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded states, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”

The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. We Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination — that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”

The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, the federal government can run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution’s limitations of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. States have little or no response.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM

 

http://walterewilliams.com/historical-ignorance/

 

[wherorangi]

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Historical Ignorance

 

The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, .... 

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read the Supreme Court ruling yourself ok

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whats also missing from this internets account of proceedings is that the CSA attacked the USA militarily and started the war

[BilliJo Aldrin]

The concept of perpetual union was used as the basis for deciding the case, The case in no way proved there was a perpetual union, perceptual union was  simply accepted as a fact in order to procede, but it was NOT proven by this case.

[Rhonda Huntress]

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wherorangi wrote:

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Historical Ignorance

 

The War of 1861 brutally established that states could not secede. We are still living with its effects. Because states cannot secede, .... 

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read the Supreme Court ruling yourself ok

+

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I did.

It said they were not going to touch the question of whether or not a state had the right to secede.

 

>>It is needless to discuss at length the question whether the right of a State to withdraw from the Union for any cause regarded by herself as sufficient is consistent with the Constitution of the United States.

Or am I reading that incorrectly.

Whether or not they could legally secede was not the question.  They were under US federal governance when the case was submitted to the courts.  That was one of the defendent's key points.