Allegory of the Wasp and the Caterpillar

Some wasps paralyze caterpillars by stinging them, then injecting their eggs into the motionless caterpillar, who now serves as the wasp’s incubator.

Today, many good-hearted people have been “stung” by accusations (or the fear of accusations) that they are racist, transphobic or unpatriotic. They are paralyzed into silence. Some of them become incubators for things they don’t really believe, e.g., We must fight racism is by dividing people into “races” and segregating us from each other. E.g., One’s sex is something one feels, not something determined the type of gamete one’s body is designed to produce.E.g., Public health professionals asserting baseless COVID claims.

I’ve spoken to many of these paralyzed fearful people. They tell me that they remain silent because they are uncomfortable, worried about losing friends if they speak or worried about the financial repercussions of speaking out.

It might be that we have lived too well and for too long as a society, causing us to be of shape, intellectually flabby and afraid of being called names. We might need to endure much more difficult times before we are able to regroup and recalibrate. Consider the maxim:

Hard times create strong people.

Strong people create good times.

Good times create weak people.

Weak people create hard times.

Many people tell me that they “can’t” speak up, but “can’t” is mostly a state of mind. This reluctance to speak up doesn’t bode well for a country established upon the idea of individual liberties, a place where the citizens themselves must be in charge lest the tyrants take over.

This is a country founded on the idea that it is one’s duty to dissent for free speech to work. As Martin Luther King famously warned: “A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”

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School District Quietly Drops Honors Classes in the Name of “Equity.” Parents Respond.

One aspect of the great academic leveling in the name of equity. This video features one school district, but others are trying to do this too. I'm proud of these parents for speaking up with passion and common sense.

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An Invitation to Sign up with FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ("FIRE") is an extremely well-run non-partisan non-profit organization promoting free speech and the First Amendment. FIRE files lawsuits throughout the United States and issues letters of concern to those who engage in censorship and those who attempt to compel speech of others. I've been associated with FIRE for several years and I've seen their work up close. I'm writing to encourage anyone interested in these issues to sign up to receive FIRE's emailings. I can guarantee that even after receiving a few of these emailings, you will have a deeper and more nuanced understanding about the importance of free speech in the United States.

Mission Statement of FIRE:

"FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought—the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them. Follow the link below to sign up.

FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience."

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Orwell and Huxley, per Postman

Quote:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Jimi Hendrix Discusses “Race”

From Joe Garza of Free Black Thought, "WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM JIMI HENDRIX ABOUT RACE: A message of unity from the God of Guitar."

[D]spite the genuine oppression facing black people at the time (compared to today’s “oppression” like microaggressions and implicit bias), Hendrix didn’t have time to view the world through the bifocal lens of Us and Them. He cared about harmony and peace and universal love. These are “Kumbayatic” concepts today, no doubt, but aren’t they better weapons against the forces of bigotry than that of lecturing the largely non-bigoted majority on its perceived “power,” “privilege,” and “fragility?”

Hendrix is deservedly recognized for his godlike guitar prowess and his contributions to rock ’n’ roll, but his insights into race and the motivations behind radical political coalitions should be given extra attention. In 2013, The Guardian published some excerpts from diary entries and interviews, including his thoughts on race, as here:

Race isn’t a problem in my world. I don’t look at things in terms of races. I look at things in terms of people. I’m not thinking about black people or white people. I’m thinking about the obsolete and the new. There’s no color part now, no black and white.

This is a pretty daring statement for a prominent black man to make in the 1960s and is in stark contrast to the celebrities of today who use their alabaster soapboxes to scream and spit about the dangers of racism as if Jim Crow laws were still in effect. Hendrix extolled the virtues of colorblindness in a time when almost everyone was still hyper-focused on pigment, and yet the mostly-white class of public figures today have the nerve to bombard audiences with Church Lady diatribes against everything “problematic” while sitting comfortably in their gold-trimmed, diamond-encrusted Beverly Hills enclaves, doing everything they can to save the world by dividing it. Who’s the real hero in this story?

One more quote:

The following quotation is attributed to Hendrix:

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.

Continue ReadingJimi Hendrix Discusses “Race”