In wandering through some old posts, found this one from 2010, with certainly bears repeating, on free speech: Americans have always considered their rights–especially the one of free speech–as “inalienable.” And why not: after all, it’s in our fundamental national document, isn’t it? Isn’t that why we make such a big deal of “rights?” Because …
China’s Historic Houston Consulate Gets the Boot, Goes Up in Flames — vulcanhammer.info
In the midst of the souring relationship between the two countries: Beijing vowed to retaliate after it said that the United States ordered its Houston consulate to be closed within 72 hours, calling it an “outrageous and unjustified move,” marking a serious escalation in the quickly deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and China… The announcement […] …
What the woke movement shares with communism — UnHerd
“In the summer of 1921 luck broke my way in the shape of the great Russian famine which then threatened to cost about 30,000,000 lives, and probably did cost 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 including deaths from disease.”1 For Walter Duranty, who as the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times led the cover-up of the… …
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Falling to Cancel Culture in San Francisco
In this case, Gary Garrels, curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: Until last week, Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster. …
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Will the Current Marchers for #BLM End Up With a Maoist Fate?
In a post linked to a few days ago, this observation about the similarity of the Cultural Revolution in China to what's going on in the streets today: For instance, the Red Guards of 1968 often came from privileged backgrounds. The first groups emerged from the elite high schools and universities in Beijing and belonged …
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How the establishment fell for eugenics — UnHerd
It isn’t the most lavish of memorials: a small stained glass window featuring a 7×7 grid of seven different colours. But on closer inspection you see that each colour appears once — and once only — in each row and column. This glorified Sudoku puzzle is called a ‘Latin square’, and is one of those things… …
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America’s cultural revolution is just like Mao’s — UnHerd
After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once. I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little. In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted… via …
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How a 1990s book predicted 2020 — UnHerd
Late last year I began working on a piece marking 25 years since the publication of what I believed to be the most prescient work of the age. The book had been published in Britain in the spring of 1995 but as February and then March 2020 came and went, we were all rather distracted.… via …
Cultural appropriation is progressive and anti-racist — UnHerd
Florence Pugh has become the latest casualty in the war against “cultural appropriation”. The charming star of Macbeth, Midsommar and Little Women recently issued a nauseating apology on her Instagram account for donning cornrows and painting henna on her hands when she was a teenager. Pugh recalled how she hadn’t heard of “cultural appropriation” until …
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The West’s monumental crisis — UnHerd
In 1998, the urban planning student Mohammed Atta handed in his masters thesis at Hamburg’s University of Technology. Examining in depth the architecture of Aleppo’s historic Bab al-Nasr district, Atta’s thesis presented a picture of the human-scale “Islamic-Oriental city,” whose winding cobbled streets, shaded souks and alleys carved from honey-coloured stone had been violated by… via …
