"...Because ideas and words create society they must be controlled in order to establish a proper ones. "

That has to be the scariest set of words I've read in a long time. Who defines "proper"? Who "controls"? Who defines proper tomorrow?

Listen, and understand! SJWs are out there! They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop...ever, until you are re-educated!

-- The Collected Sayings of Kyle Reese

Well, parents of small children, for one?

By that I mean: Yes, there are certain ideas that MUST be taught to children, such as that racism is wrong - AND that it's more than just hate. Namely, it's horribly wrong to stereotype, such as when a white kid says that a black stranger riding an expensive bike must have stolen it. At the same time, though, some stereotypes are only 5% correct, while others are 80% correct, and part of becoming an intelligent, concerned adult means learning which is which.

In other words, there's bad PC and then there's good PC, something I wish McElroy had clarified. (Yes, I like her work, otherwise.)

Miss Manners wrote a very good column on that, in 1995:

"It's Not Always Wrong To Be Correct"

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-06-30/features/9507250139_1_miss-manners-rude-bigotry

Excerpt:

"...Miss Manners finds herself being drawn in, because insulting people on the basis of what was clearly said or done out of nothing but good will is, obviously, rude. No question about it.

"In fact, this is so obvious that Miss Manners has become slightly suspicious of those stories. And when (as a polite cover-up for her inability to double up in shock or merriment at yet another of these tales) she asks dainty questions, some of these incidents turn out to be not quite so clear-cut..."

Here's a slightly longer version of that column (sorry I didn't find it first):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/06/25/good-pc-vs-bad-pc/0ecede84-2980-4dab-8d51-942341c7f8d5/?utm_term=.89af4dcb3860

And here's something regarding teaching children that no, racism isn't OK even when people you know and love practice it:

http://www.uexpress.com/miss-manners/2002/5/12/childhood-is-full-of-lessons

Excerpts:

...Not long ago, (Miss Manners) delivered herself of the opinion that young mothers who chastise their own mothers for recklessly endangering the next generation with their ignorance of child-rearing are themselves neglecting an essential element of child-rearing. Surely it is in their interest to set their children an example of how to treat aging parents.

Some of those mothers disagreed. The peril to their own children from these ignorant grandmothers is simply too imminent to be ignored, they shot back.

Miss Manners capitulated immediately. Yes, yes, the grandmothers have to use the car seat, no matter how foolish they think it to be, and no, they can't smoke in the nursery, no matter how many babies seemed to thrived on this. Some rules change, and everyone is expected to learn and obey them. Miss Manners is afraid that there is no grandmother clause that exempts those who brought up children successfully before the rules were promulgated.

And, some rules will never change. Parents who fail to teach their children such basic rules of society as saying hello, eating properly and thanking their grandparents for presents cannot justify themselves by declaring that they consider such matters unimportant.

Yet there are dicier issues between the generations. A Gentle Reader who promises "not to overreact to the holding of the baby, the white bread, and the cookie, and to teach the children about forks and thank you letters" asks, "What is a mother to do when the issues over which the generations differ are graver ones?

"I refer to prejudices about people of other races or sexual leanings, and the willingness to express these prejudices in a coarse and tasteless fashion. I do not want my children to learn these beliefs, and I do not want them to think that even if they do learn some of them, that it is acceptable to express them by epithets or with vulgar so-called humor.

"There is also the corresponding issue, a belief that certain children, that is to say, boys, need to be 'toughened up' so that they become 'men' and not persons harboring any of those objectionable sexual leanings. I don't think it's realistic to expect to mold children in this way (in whichever direction). I just don't want my sons badgered and possibly taught a lot of obnoxious behaviors for the sake of becoming 'real men.'

"What do they think they're going to grow up to be, anyway -- giraffes?"

No, but not ostriches, either.

As unfortunate as it is to have such influences within the family...

Lenona, that's not what is being discussed. For instance, if I say:

The federal government should stick to its enumerated powers, run a balanced budget, and leave the rest to the people and the states.

the SJWs would come down with a case of the vapors. To them, that set of statements is so full of hate that I'm probably the second coming of Trump.

If you're not conviced, try this:

Accusations of sexual misconduct on a campus of education is best handled by the local constabulary.

"Misogynist!"

McElroy echoes something that I've observed about the Left for a long time. Leftists ascribe to themselves the ability to, by merely speaking of something, cause it to come into existence. Conversely, by speaking negative of something, they can cause it to cease to exist. It's almost a belief in magic. (It's one reason that most leftists talk incessantly, and consider their opinions to be appropriate to be expressed at any time.)

Of course, that usually doesn't work. And when it fails to work, they resort to the explanation that nearly all magic-believing religions do: the person didn't try hard enough. They didn't believe deeply enough. They are somehow corrupt in spirit, or else external forces were too powerful. This explains why the Left continues to double down on the tactics that lost them the last election: The system, the strategy, the beliefs, those are never wrong. When failure occurs, it was because the person doing it wasn't sufficiently devout. If that person had simply tried harder and been more pure in spirit, it would have worked. Hillary would have totally won the election if she had gone more gutter, attacked more aggressively, insulted those flyover-country hicks more stridently. There was nothing wrong with her expressed views or opinions, or with anything that she did. She simply didn't try hard enough.

One thing I recall from the abnormal-psych unit of the psych classes I took in college is that paranoia and delusions of grandeur often occur together. We clearly see this in today's SJWs and other elements of the Left. They are the elect who stand between humanity and oblivion. That's why they must constantly be on the attack, not let up for a single minute, and trust or emphasize with no one. After all, if they fail, what will the world do without them?

Because ideas and words create society they must be controlled in order to establish a proper ones.

And who are these SJWs that they, and they alone, get to decide what is "proper" in society? And decide by fiat, not debate or consensus?

This is the same authoritarian spirit that drove the revolution in St. Petersburg in 1917. It's not about freeing society, it's about enslaving it and controlling it.

Darth, thanks. I thought the article was self evident.

Conan and Cousin Dave touch upon a couple of excellent notions that should be tied together.

What have we always heard about the failures of Marxists? it wasn't done correctly by those people. As CD puts it, they weren't sufficiently pure of heart.

The SJWs are Marxists. They promise that this time, they'll get it right since they're pure of heart. Anyone with a different opinion is either deluded, or they're reactionary and need to be re-educated.

Or eliminated.

"The SJWs are Marxists. They promise that this time, they'll get it right since they're pure of heart. Anyone with a different opinion is either deluded, or they're reactionary and need to be re-educated.

Or eliminated."

I R A Darth Aggie at February 20, 2017 8:13 AM

Social Justice Warriors and radical Islamists are the same people, and will attempt to achieve their goals through the same means. First they shout down those who disagree, then they will resort to trying to seize the government and impose their will that way.

Half the human race has half baked crazy ideas about how the world works. The trick is seperating out, and dealing with those individuals who are willing to resort to violence to achieve their goals.

that's not what is being discussed.
________________________________________

Where was that made clear, please?

I just felt that McElroy was being a bit too vague.

As Richard Dawkins pointed out in "The God Delusion," Hitler and others weren't aberrations from their time - plenty of "nice people" in Europe and North America had pretty similar ideas that were often expressed, if not everywhere or anytime. In other words, blatant racism might have been considered rude when expressed to a mixed audience, but it wasn't considered evil. There's a perfectly good reason why you can't get away with saying, nowadays, that it isn't evil.

Of course, that doesn't mean that everything is so simple or that self-described SJWs aren't rude, bullying types, as a rule.

As Richard Dawkins pointed out in "The God Delusion," Hitler and others weren't aberrations from their time - plenty of "nice people" in Europe and North America had pretty similar ideas that were often expressed, if not everywhere or anytime.

Yes.

And you know who those people were? how they identified themselves? progressives. Now a days, they'll tolerate a how can we go about eliminate the white race instead of the reverse.

And you know who those people were? how they identified themselves? progressives.
______________________________________

So did people who were completely different, like Dorothy Parker (and her famous friends), who was born in 1893 and whose ashes are now at the headquarters of the NAACP in Baltimore.

So "progressive" is an even more relative term than you might think.

This is so true. To some people, reality is just a series of abstractions. You have categories (white people, brown people) not individuals. You have words, not actions. It is often the case that people who may in reality be prejudiced will never show that prejudice in real life because they have incentives to make money, keep their job, have good relations with neighbors, etc. So they have never actually harmed anyone. Probably 98% of the population falls in this category.
By dealing with only abstractions rather than thinking of transactions, customs, and institutions, SJWs are fooled into thinking that anyone with a disadvantage is being currently oppressed. Let us take the ghetto. Assume for a moment that much of the problem in the ghetto results from the combination of past discrimination, self-sorting by minorities (more comfortable around their own minority), and the pernicious effects of welfare (including building welfare housing) and problems due to drugs (broken homes, fathers in jail). A kid growing up in this ghetto will have disadvantages even if he never sees a white person and even if no one ever discriminates against him. This does not prove racism at all. A disadvantage is a disadvantage but need not be caused by anyone in particular or anyone living. Poor whites growing up in Appalachia have been disadvantaged for 200 years. A disadvantage can be cultural--see Thomas Sowell's great book Race and Culture. An advantage can be cultural--e.g. the Jews in America in spite of being denied entry into any Ivy League college for 100 yrs getting so many Nobel prizes. The assumption that all disadvantages are caused by the white race is not only pernicious it is fallacious. It also leads to denial of history: for example that Chinese were actively discriminated against for over 100 years but now you will have a hard time imagining that because they are doing so well that their test scores are too high for many colleges (oh, I guess the discrimination lives on!!).

This point about words and ideas illuminates some truly absurd things such as tweeting campaigns to fight Boko Haram or some other injustice, as if just the act of a bunch of people tweeting will cause Boko Haram to see the error of their ways and straighten up and free those hundreds of school girls.
It points out why feminists get outraged about sensible advice to young women like maybe don't get stinking drunk--rape should be stopped by a change of consciousness, according to them, and until we get that perfect world women should not be forced to accept the imperfect world we currently have.
It explains why, when all the Jim Crow laws are gone and huge advantages in hiring and college admissions exist and you would be hard pressed to find any overt discrimination, people are still screaming that whites are the devil and bigots--because no doubt they are not perfectly free from prejudice (or can't prove they are) and therefore are as guilty as the KKK.

Sounds like islam to me.

The SJWs are Marxists. ~ I R A Darth Aggie at February 20, 2017 8:13 AM

They're true believers, fanatics. Whether in Marxism or some other -ism. Their answer is the answer. And your failure to realize that and adjust your thinking/actions/word accordingly indicates some fundamental flaw in your character - making you an evil person, a heretic, an enemy of the truth.

Whether their -ism is inspired by Islam, Marx, sketchy environmental theories or some other teaching, fanatics are dangerous. And fanatics with political power are doubly so.

And when that -ism mandates a collectivist outlook, the fanatic is even more dangerous. Collectivist ideologies make it permissible, even mandatory, to do evil for the good of society, of humanity. It makes anyone targeted an enemy of humanity. The individualist is selfish and greedy, a sub-human cancer to be excised.

"Sounds like islam to me."

Yeah, and I think that's why the Left is so fond of radical Islam. They are both using each other as allies of convenience; they each figure they'll deal with the other once the common goal of eliminating the Western middle and working classes has been accomplished. But at some more primitive level -- I think they recognize each other. Or rather, they recognize their own reflection.

Touching on what Darth said: A main tenant of Marxism is the "dialectical materialism", which basically starts from the premise that what the average Joe and Jane perceive has very little in common with what exists, and therefore it is up the far more knowledgeable and wise Marxists to guide their lives. You see the same thing in the SJWs when they speak of themselves as "woke". Obviously, it's a form of gnosticism, a tale that has been spun numerous times through the centuries -- an elite, superior by means of special knowledge, that must save humanity from itself and must have complete authority to do so. Or, to put it more bluntly, standard dictator bullshit.

As far as racism: The problem is that the Left has vastly watered down the meaning of the word; it is now used to describe anything that a leftist or SJW doesn't like, whether it be the KKK or the wrong kind of mustard on their veganburger. This has not succeeded in driving actual racists further into the shadows; just the opposite. Racists now have more freedom and social room to operate than they have had since the 1950s. People figure that if you're going to be labeled a racist anyway for just going about your ordinary life, then why not be a racist? It is satisfying, in a primitive sort of way, to be able to blame all of your problems on people who are different from you. And in fact this is exactly what the SJW's do: if you are different from them in any way, you are inferior, the cause of all problems, and you deserve to be enslaved.

And so it comes full circle. The Left is now up-front about its prejudices against white males, the women who marry them, and most of the working class of whatever race, and business people and entrepreneurs of all sorts. And, after being dormant for decades, there's been a new breakout of antisemitism among the Left -- which once styled itself as the protector of Jews in the Western world. But the SJW's excuse their own bigotry as "justice", which means that they have succeeded in destroying that word too.

"Sounds like islam to me."

Yeah, and I think that's why the Left is so fond of radical Islam. They are both using each other as allies of convenience; they each figure they'll deal with the other once the common goal of eliminating the Western middle and working classes has been accomplished. But at some more primitive level -- I think they recognize each other. Or rather, they recognize their own reflection."

They are united in their efforts to try and bring down capitalism and western civilization.
The Jews are poster children for capitalism and sucess.

It has never been about what they are *for*. It has always been about what they are against.

I am glad people on this board are starting to recognize the banality and universality of ideological crusades against the west.

We can't control what people think, we can only stomp really hard on those who commit terrorist or criminal acts in pursuit of their ends.

Sounds like islam to me. ~ Rodney B Smith at February 20, 2017 11:59 AM

Obviously, it's a form of gnosticism, a tale that has been spun numerous times through the centuries -- an elite, superior by means of special knowledge, that must save humanity from itself and must have complete authority to do so. ~ Cousin Dave at February 21, 2017 7:11 AM

Gnosticism is generally acknowledged to have Middle Eastern origins. Maybe there's something in that part of the world that wants to be dominated by religious elders.