Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

I think you do not like middle ground. You made a choice concerning the education of your children. Other parents might take a different choice. Both you and them are entitled to your/their choice and that is the whole point, people in Hungary do not have this choice.

 

I appreciate the honesty, I really do. Honest suggestion: perhaps get out of the academic silo more often? I don't know about Canada, but down here in America at least half the population are not Progressive. Indeed most folks in the middle are liberal, but not a illiberal progressive OR illiberal conservative.

When folks are shocked - shocked I tell you! - that there are people around who reject most of the fruits of the sexual revolution, well that just shows you they don't really know many if not most of their neighbors.

 

What's shocking to me is that we're not still burning witches.

 

I have a mental image. Mr Crenca, stern look and furrowed brow. Mrs Crenca, clutching pearls, tissue in hand, may have been crying. The conversation starts.....

Mrs Crenca: This new gay thing that only just showed up in the last few years is so concerning.

Mr Crenca: We simply cannot have our children learn about the gay. They might catch it.

Mrs Crenca: So it's settled then. Catholic school it is.

Mr Crenca: Good, good. We're safe now. There's surely never been any gay things happen in Catholic school....

 

You want to know why more parents want to get their kids out of the public school system? It is due to crap like this from people who think are smarter than their parents.

Every single person that I met or talked from academia think they know more/better than the other guy. I get looked down often by academic folks when they discovered that I'm a Jewish-raised atheist do not not fall the line of the "Progressive" orthodoxy.

You really need to step out of your comfort zone of academia and talk with people who do not share the same views. If people do that in the US, it would make this country a better place.

 

Speaking into a void as someone who spent 11 years in a very, VERY traditionally Catholic males-only school where the most progressive thing going on was the eco-friendly mandates due to our being under a Franciscan order:

Parents should free to raise their kids however they want under the understanding that they may later in life grow against their rearing. Kids who call out parents for falling for pseudoscientific anti-5G water filtration systems are entitled to that; parents who call out kids for thinking they have life figured out once they have a romantic partner and a few paychecks in their bank account are entitled to the same.

 

Despite my poor attempt at humor, I do respect that choice. Wrap your kids in cotton wool, teach them to fear what they don't understand, shape them into raging drag queens, whatever.

What I do NOT respect the removal of that choice by Hungary's government. Banning all education or depiction of homosexuality for those under 18 is just crazy.

FWIW, I thought homophobia was insanely irrational well before I started university.

 

Since I live in Italy, I don't know how the public school system in the US is, but personally I find that choosing a school tailored on the parents' personal beliefs and ideas kinda defeat the primary purpose of education, which is personal growth, and that can only happen if we step outside of what we know and are met with the new, the unknown, the different, something that gives us a new perspective.

 

Indeed.

I just don't know what closeted education is supposed to achieve in the modern world, with evermore information at your fingertips. Even decades ago when I was a youngun, it was the kids at the ultra religious schools who always had the best sex parties, the best drugs, and the most oblivious parents. Kids find these things out all by themselves, they rebel, and they can become bitter at being sheltered.

Of course, it steps into a different realm when that education is state controlled, as it is now in Hungary.

 

True story:

My older daughter (now in 7th grade) has had a consistent "best friend" since pre-K in this school. His name is Craig (his sex is male, but I have changed the name to protect the innocent) and the relationship he and my daughter have is innocent, organic, and overall very healthy. It turns out his older brother (high school age - different school) identifies as gay. Last year Craig started talking about homosexualism to my daughter, asking her if she thought if was" ok", disagreeing with Catholic teaching through mostly simplistic soundbite moralism we are all familiar with, bringing pink paper/pencils/erasers to school, etc. etc. My daughter talked to me about this, and I explained to her what we as a family (we are not in fact RCatholic), her Catholic school, etc. believe (this falls under somewhat technical term of philosophical/theological anthropology). I also discussed what was happening with her teachers and the principal. In the end, with only minor intervention on the part of the principal with Craig's parents, the problem mostly took care of itself. Craig and my daughters healthy relationship continues uninterrupted to this day, though because of their ages things are changing. My daughter now names Sally as her "best friend", and this is normative.

Even the Amish are in no way protected from the fruits of the sexual revolution, let alone integrationalist groups like the RCatholics.

I have on more than one occasion criticized Classical Liberalism, and it is my opinion that it is a deeply troubled thing in western civ. That's a minority opinion however, and the fact is most folks (including myself) in our society are liberal to a lessor or greater degree (mostly greater). When caught between illiberal Progressivism and classical liberalism, I choose liberalism because it is (according to its principals) a check and limit on Progressive moralism. When caught between illiberal Progressivism and illiberal Conservativism, I choose illiberal Conservativism. Progressivism will of course call it's rival "facism!" and the like, but that's just name calling those who don't think and believe as it does.

I say all this not to convince you, but to be honest with you. I try not to as Solzhenitsyn so aptly put it "live by lies". I commend true blood classical liberals such as @YMO and the Pres. of Hungary for standing up to Progressive illiberalism, and admit it gives me hope that perhaps Classical Liberalism is not the spent force in history I think it is.

 

Back to speechless again.

 

Did they banish the gay? God, I hope so.

Just don't tell me minorities are allowed at that school or I'll go f'ing ballistic.

 

This was my experience as well. I grew up (as a liberal Protestant - very liberal, Unitarian Universalism - Jefferson's bible and the American Way!) in a town that was dominated by one of America's most well known Evangelical preachers. I thought we were the "rebels" until high school when I met the children from these "fundamentalist" schools.

All this however is well known phsycho/social phenomena, and in no ways justifies as an unqualified moral good the sexual revolution in general or your own particular acceptance of it. It's good you continue to be "speechless", as you are talking with people who don't buy your particular (Progressive and illiberal) religion and getting out and encountering folks who think, believe, and live differently is a good thing! @YMO is correct that the modern academy has to be the most isolated and illiberal institution in our society.

 

The turn this thread has made would make Michel Foucault's head spin. Actually, better idea: somebody needs to make a fake Foucault account here to post things to confuse everyone to the point that we all agree with each other and we go back to talking about stereo shit.

 

As if nothing bad ever happened to kids at a Catholic school!

NB: I spent a couple of years, mid 1960s, at an Rc school, staffed by priests. According to my experience, they were a very decent lot. I'm pretty sure I never saw any abuse, but then, I probably didn't know what it was then.

It was a single-sex school. And lots of, ahem, experimentation, went on. I no longer know anybody from that school, so I can't say what orientation people chose in later life.

One thing it did for me was to be a taster of christianity: I left knowing it was not for me.

I'm sure multitudes shared my my positive experience of education in an RC institution. Sadly, far far too many did, and perhaps do not. The skeletons tumble out of the closet every day.

As to that particular school, which is still RC, but not run/taught by priests, if I lived nearby, had kids, and money, I'd most certainly consider it.

 

Malaysian pride (Namewee is Malaysian) XD Our politicians hate him too. Love him to bits.

 

Okay... can we talk about how comments on youtube are handled? So many of my comments get auto-plucked, I don't understand why, and I'm beginning to think this is a big serious problem that just goes unseen by people who aren't like me, crazy enough to want to go back and edit every single comment he makes. A lot of times, you just don't know you've been filtered out. You'll see the comment go up, and only find out it didn't actually post if you go back to the page later, or try to edit the comment before leaving the page. It'll vanish when you hit save, after giving a generic notification message about it not posting.

Thing is, post a comment like immediately after saying something like "This video is great!" and it will go through every time. You can f'ing spam the shit out of that and they'll all go up. But no matter how many times you post what gets dropped, it won't post. So it is the bots moderating. They just don't tell you it is.

I was on a Rittenhouse video. Understand this, I DO NOT want to get into that issue. I don't want a shitshow. I had seen a comment on there suggesting it was wrong that he went to court, calling it terrifying. To me, this is just basic ignorance of how self-defense works. It's highly misleading of something that every single person carrying a gun for defense needs to know. So I quickly threw this comment together:

I'm really scratching my head trying to figure out what about this isn't appropriate for a video talking in-depth about the highest-profile self-defense case in the country. I feel like if I just post a transcript of a major news report on the case, it'll probably get filtered because of the things it describes and the way it describes them. Makes it real fuckin hard to have any sort of conversation about news in the places where the most people go to talk about it.

I just don't get it. What about anything I wrote up there is just "too much" for the conversation? I see comments in there that are straight up nuts. Violent and angry, with profanity and a lot of really harsh, dark wording. They fly, but this is too much? If I'm incorrect, that's fine. I'd rather it be up there and get corrected, bring it to my attention. But I feel like that's about the worst thing you can say about my comment there. I think a lot about tone on sites like that, because people have twitteritis and will jump on the smallest things you say.

I don't think these AI bots can work that crap out. I think they just see certain words and shy off. They can't see context, they can't detect messaging. The problem is, I think, a lot of those words are irreplaceable in what are often important conversations to millions of f'ing people, and in themselves are not harmful in the majority of actual uses they have. It's hard to know, because they don't ever tell you. They don't even really tell you they've filtered your comment. And it's probably burying tons of voices in big discussions around difficult subjects.

Like, man, as much as I can't stand a lot of the complaining about censorship from extremists out there... I do see where social media platforms have terrible attitudes about what regulating their platforms looks like. This solution in particular strikes me as a glaring issue that rarely, if ever gets brought up. You don't even know when or why you're being silenced. And yeah, after putting in the time to give some basic advice and push the ignorance ratio back in just the smallest possible way and just getting shut down again, I got mad as hell. I feel like I can't have conversations with people in the comments on that site because we all have to dance around our words and then, half of them don't even make it through and nobody even realizes.

I dunno, I think it's pretty bad. In my mind I'm second-guessing things I say on there, wondering if I will be heard, or if it'll get scooped up. So I change the wording and lose part of the message. And it's not like the original message wasn't sincere, compiled with effort, or intended to add value. I don't shitpost like that. I just wanted to be a part of the discussion, like many other people do. Honestly, more than anything it just bums me out in a big way.