Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

CRT is a racialist ideology that says people are racist by nature. It is a moralism and a "religion" (though not a fully fleshed out one), not a secular fact. As I understand it Youngkin ran, and so far has governed, that such moralism does not belong in public/secular schools, that parents who do not want such religion taught to their children are "domestic terrorist's", etc.. I am the first to admit that Classical Liberalism is under enormous pressure, the "space" for it is shrinking, and the illiberal left is used to getting its own way. Still, I think Youngkin's and the coming GOP success in the coming elections will be in large part because the illiberal left overreached and thought the majority of parents were ready to have their children taught such ideology.

GOP inc. fell into this role by accident, by simply being slightly more liberal and tolerant than the illiberal left, so I admit it is not indicative of their thoughtful reflection or political skill. Nevertheless they are more liberal and ironically more secular, as of 2022, then the left is currently.

 

Parents do have the right to decide what gets taught to their children. Last time I check, even the middle of the road parent don't want the public schools to teach morality, that's is the parents job. End of the day, I kind of prefer to let the parent raise their children how they see morality wise.

No one is stopping the parent to teach CRT at home if that is what they believe. No one is stopping the parent to teach GOP good/Dem bad stuff at home. Just keep this stuff out of math class.

 

the point of CRT is combating racialist ideology and the idea that people are racist by nature. this post is 180 degrees from right talking about real CRT. CRT is intensely anti things like affirmative action, etc. the issue isn't with CRT, but that dems don't actually support real CRT. they support a watered down, intensely moralized version of it that serves their agenda and allows them to cast their opponents as villains for votes

I view systemic racism in the US as one of the greatest threats to individual freedom, so analyzing and dissecting how we got here and what to do about it is essential to my mindset as a liberal. everything and anything that creates excessive legal tyranny over the individual must be disestablished, and that includes systemic racism more than almost anything else.

CRT's criticisms of classical liberalism are not actually critiques of classical liberalism, they're critiques of how the establishment uses classical liberal talking points to disguise illiberal behavior.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong (about the dems version of it) but there is definitely important analysis going on here that's getting caught in the political crossfire. CRT is a real thing that exists and is a very specific segment of legal studies. I don't like how the media has made it a term that means basically anything and nothing.

 

I don't want to argue about what CRT is or isn't, let's just assume I think you're wrong and you think I'm wrong. My issue is that the presumption of a neutral existing is false. If you disagree with CRT, the neutral position is not banning CRT. If you think CRT makes white kids feel guilty for being white, the morally neutral position is not saying teachers can't teach about the history of racism in America. Other than hard sciences and math, it is impossible to teach at all without imparting at least implied moral positions. If you think what you're teaching is morally neutral it's because you haven't reflected enough on the lessons you're imparting.

 

That's easy since it's a legal framework and there's not a whole lot of law schools that teach math to K-6 children.

 

I never said ban CRT, I just say as a theory it has too many holes/issues to the point that it should be discussed and ridiculed. Personally I'm not a fan of making more laws in the books that bans CRT, but that's just me.

One of my old math classes back in high-school did talk politics....so yeah.

 

as an aside i have never met a critical race theorist who believes in dem policies like affirmative action. It's at best a bandaid solution and at worst a system of token victories designed to keep the masses mollified. dem policies are the hunger games for minorities. if anything, CRT is most critical of democrats.

i think it's important to distinguish critical race theory, the antiracist study segment of critical legal studies, and Critical Race Theory, the scare tactic/watered down debate talking point/toothless Democrat implementation

 

let's clarify what critical race theory actually is for a second here. critical race theory is method of legal analysis where it is considered that a lawmaker may have had a racial outcome in mind when writing a law that is not textually racist. that's it! that's all critical race theory is. for instance, the idea that the marijuana ban in the US had racial motivations (later confirmed by leaks) is the clearest example of critical race theory I can think of. I happen to like critical race theory, and I am really annoyed at the current debate going on. Imagine waking up one day to a furious debate about one of your favorite topics and they've managed to reduce it to something basically meaningless and everybody is angry about shit that has nothing to do with it. that's my experience with the current political climate.

 

Whhaaaat?

They want to control your right to even be a parent!

Aren't the final words of the Christian wedding, "Now, your can go and screw?" And if you were doing it before, that's a sin.

 

You put this well, why you are (consciously or unconsciously you don't say) not so much a Classical Liberal - you don't believe there is a real secular "neutral ground", that all education is education into (and from) a moral, and thus religious point of view. In other words history, literature and "English", economics, social studies, and even the very rules and "culture" of the school itself is necessarily moral/religious instruction, however vague this foundation is in any given pedagogy.

I actually don't think your wrong in essence. I may not be interested in your particular illiberal view of history, culture, and society and the moral imperatives that you believe flow from it, but I am not in fact a classical liberal myself. That said I don't think it matters, because I think most Americans are Classical Liberals at heart. American's with children are even more likely to be CL's and intolerant of illiberal progressivism being taught as fact to their children. One thing fer sure, even though I am not a CLer, I would much rather live in their village then the progressive one, because at least the CLers don't hate me, want to evangelize my kids, etc.

That is it, as long as you look behind it. Behind the legal theory is an anthropological theory, a moral analysis of "race", economic/social systems, etc. It's a Hegelian (more often called "marxist") view of man and history, a kind of historical determinism. The civil rights movement in America was accepted not on Hegelian, but on Classically Liberal grounds. Americans were convinced by it that racism was not a "systematic" problem, but a problem of attitude and character that was within the individuals control. The civil rights movement started to lose the average CLer with affirmative action, but even this was tolerated as a "fix" that was not forever (i.e. systemic or by nature) but a temporary corrective. CRT is non-starter for the Classically Liberal, because it is a theoretical rejection of what CL believes about people, history, free will, and the world itself.

 

People are shaped both by their individual will and their surroundings, and it's always a balance between those two things. Human reality is neither fully individualistic nor fully deterministic. If human thought was fully individualistic, I could wake up tomorrow and decide not to have PTSD. If it was fully deterministic, I couldn't choose to continue living anyway despite my PTSD. I don't think there's really a point to the free will/determinism argument. The answer, to me, will always be about the interplay between both. I don't see a point in placing determinism and indeterminism as opposites or even forces that are constantly battling. They are both realities to me.

 

I agree 100%, and Classical Liberalism mostly agrees, let's say 78%, though it would emphasize the individual (it is a Cartesian philosophy after all) more than you or I would. What it outright rejects is the (ultimately metaphysical) determinism of CRT and any pedagogy/law/hiring policy/etc. that flows from it. Perhaps for the first time my lifetime the illiberal progressive left has really stepped in the deep shit from a tactical point of view. The idea that you are going to convince a majority of American's that meritocracy is not true - that all they have and do is not really due to their efforts, character, and beliefs but simply an unearned artifact of the color of their skin and their born-into social class...well, good luck with that!

 

that's because of the sunk cost fallacy. they don't want to believe it because they have suffered, and they need that to mean something. both the gop and dems weaponize suffering under things like class, racism etc to create divides among the American people because we're less of a threat that way. i think everyone can sense this, but nobody can agree on why. classical liberals think it's to weaken opposition to legal tyranny, small gov conservatives think it's to increase State power for Nefarious Communist Purposes. small gov communists think it's to increase State power for Nefarious Hypercapitalist Purposes. auths of both sides think it's to accomplish The Other Side's Agenda. racists think it's something absurd like a secret jewish conspiracy. everyone disagrees on who is behind it and what they want, but everyone knows the establishment doesn't want citizens to have power.

 

I disagree. The divide, the non-consensus of what "the good society" (or the good family, or the good person) should be is not a mere artifact of self-serving manipulation of the elites, though that does exist. That's the problem with Hegelian analysis, it always ends up in the same place - who does or does not "have power" determined by class. The divide is much deeper, older, and "human" than all that. That's why Classical Liberalism is superior to the Hegelian world view, it recognizes the reality of the divide for what it is (religious disagreement), and describes what it means to be human in community more accurately, even if its prescriptions (based on a secular "neutral ground" and comprise) are not always the equal of the conflict. Hegelianism in society/politics is like a corrupted imitation of Calvinism, except without heaven/hell that might make it palatable at least to some. CL's, particularly now that Covid has got so many more of them understanding what's happening in schools/universities, are becoming wise to the illiberalism of all this.

 

I don't think that, though. That's not what I was saying. I was in a cult. I am intimately familiar with the different ways power can come about. Hell, all you really need is someone who's good at talking.

That's my biggest issue with most or all political and economic theories: they don't account for cult power, which does an insane (some people may say the most) amount of harm. because they can't. No social, legal, ethical, moral, or economic framework can account for one person who's really good with words (or exploiting whatever kind of communication is common in the society). No matter how elegant or well-designed your system is, or how realistic or down to Earth, all it takes is one dude who's really good at talking to twist it into an exploitative system. It happens no matter what. Big government, small government, or even if you have no government at all, and that depresses me.

If we overthrew our current system and replaced it with some other system, the same sorts of people would just engineer the same sorts of issues in the new system that they did with our current one. It may take a few hundred years if the system is IDEALLY designed to prevent this, but it will happen eventually. This kind of corruption is system-independent.

 

I don’t know exactly what she meant as I’m not in her head but there’s a consistent belief among the left that children are the property of the state and parents should have a reduced role in raising them. You can see the fruits of this in the current curriculum in most schools where education is taking a back seat to social indoctrination under the guise of “anti-racism”. Some on the left (and those in power now) sees the nuclear family as counterproductive in the pursuit of their interests. This government knows best way of thinking is also how we ended up with atrocities like tribal schools, and the advent of the red guard and hitler youth where children are weaponized against their parents and society at large. Sorry for the Twitter link but it’s absolutely useless to search for anything jab related on youtube. This is talking about covid but it’s the mindset that’s important rather than the subject, today’s jab is tomorrow’s thought crime.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1483787311032815616

 

This person gets it.

My dude, I’m sorry, you’re talking out of your ass. There is no consistent belief among the left that children are property of the state. There are anti-racist discussions in school because there are increased hate crimes in communities thanks to the rise of white supremacy. There similarly isn’t a concerted or consistent effort by the left to reduce the role of nuclear family. You have zero proof to support this because it isn’t true.

Also you’re talking about the US and post a French Canadian link about the vaccine. Come on man.

 

I'm going to try to put my wider perspective into words. I don't believe in arguments about free will or determinism because, fundamentally, they are about whether or not the essence of a human being is free or bound, but I don't really believe human beings have an essence to be free or bound. i don't believe that there is will or fate. We're just very complicated biological computers, programmed both by ourselves and the people around us but ultimately no more than the metabolism of an organ. Anyone can get involved in a cult. Anyone can be reprogrammed by words. Anyone can get brain damage, have a stroke, develop a serious mental disorder etc and get reprogrammed by physical change and have that fundamentally change who they are and what they value at the drop of a hat. There is no "core" to a human being. There is no untouchable self. I learned the hard way when I got a brain injury that every person on earth is just a skull fracture away from everything about them changing. People want to believe that they have the capacity to do things like "resist," that diseases like schizophrenia etc somehow happen "from the outside in" and can be "pushed out" from some "core" that remains unchanged, but those are just attempts to cope with the reality that there is nothing immutable about a person. We are all just candles trying not to be blown out, and I find value in the love, compassion and community that springs forth because of that shared position.

This existential fear is visible and present in basically every political perspective there is. Democrats deal with it by making everything and everyone the same, because the idea of people having truly different experiences terrifies them. They tell people like me that we can do "anything able-bodied people can do!" because they are too afraid to imagine life where that isn't true--where that "core" has been breached--and because of that, they wrap around to being intolerant. "Everyone deserves rights because everyone is the same" is a scary perspective because all it takes is a bit of proof that people aren't the same and suddenly this same person doesn't believe people deserve rights.

Religious conservatives are really no different, except they accomplish this homogenization of the experience with religion and spirituality instead of social law. Of the remaining who actually do acknowledge difference, the majority sort the different into hierarchies, and very very few both acknowledge difference AND do not create a hierarchy.

The amount of people who acknowledge both that I am capable of less than others AND that doesn't make me less worthwhile of a person is frightfully small and shrinking daily.

 

Cool. My physics teacher told us war stories about when he was in the pacific theater and got shot in the leg. I thought it was cool.

Can you show me where your HS school board approved math curriculum carved out a special 15 minute period to talk politics? Were there required readings? Or specific libtard interpretations of news events to be used for indoctrination during calculus class to aid in calculating the area under a curve?

Wait, maybe my physics teacher was trying to turn us all into the most warmongering hawkish of hawks?

 

y'all think too much and are likely way overeducated. oh for the simpler times