More Mob Madness

The Mob Comes Calling For a Music Theorist

Blasphemy at the University of Texas

By Samantha Harris
National Review Online


You might think music theory is an academic area that’s safe from the illiberal mob, but a University of North Texas professor has learned otherwise.

Chances are you have never heard of the music theorist Heinrich Schenker or the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, a publication at the University of North Texas (UNT) devoted to “all facets of Schenkerian thought, including theory, analysis, pedagogy, and historical aspects.” But that journal, and, in particular, the UNT music-theory professor Timothy Jackson, who oversees it, are now at the center of a controversy that goes to the heart of whether we are truly a free society. Can people speak their minds, or will those who express dissenting opinions be destroyed by a mob they can neither challenge nor resist?

In the most recent issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Jackson published a critique of a plenary address given by the music theorist Philip Ewell to the Society for Music Theory. Ewell posited “a ‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” In particular, Ewell accused Schenker (1868–1935) of being racist, therefore suggesting that his work in music theory is tainted.

For Jackson to have questioned Ewell’s thesis and defended Schenker against the charge of racism was seen as nothing short of heresy. UNT graduate students and faculty, as well as music professors across the country, are now demanding that Jackson be investigated, his journal shut down, and his position eliminated.

The Act Party Hangs It Hat on Freedom of Speech

Not a Bad Place to Stand

The "intolerant new left" is working in the background of the Government to censor New Zealanders' thoughts and speech, Act Party leader David Seymour says.  Act unveiled a new logo with the tagline "for freedom" at its annual conference in Auckland's Parnell today, with speakers highlighting free speech policy and opposition to gun laws passed after the Christchurch shootings.

The Act party unveiled a new logo with the tagline "for freedom" at its annual conference in Auckland's Parnell today.  "None of us, nor our ancestors, came here to have our thoughts and speech censored by a state apparatus," Seymour said in his keynote speech.  "In fact, many New Zealanders have come here to get away from exactly that. But make no mistake that is exactly what the intolerant new left wants, and they are working in the background of the current Government.

"For a long time, we could rely on the liberal left to uphold freedom of expression. They may have wanted to take your property, but at least they'd let you have your thoughts and opinions."

Seymour has faced accusations he is seeking the "racist vote" after announcing a member's bill that would repeal parts of the law that makes some speech unlawful if it is threatening, abusive or insulting and likely to "excite hostility" against a group of people or bring them into contempt on the ground of their colour, race or ethnicity.  Today, Seymour said the bill would remove from the Human Rights Act the words "abusive" and "insulting" and leave only "threatening" as a crime.

"It should never be a crime to insult or abuse someone with language because nobody should ever be punished on the basis of subjective opinion."  [NZ Herald]

An Absurd Waste of Police Time

Precious Petals Need to Harden Up

We are compelled to enter the lists once again on "hate speech".  We have just had in NZ what could be called a true "whack a mole" moment.  There appears to be a growing number of people who are fundamentally confused about what free speech is.  They have taken to repulsing any speech they disagree with as "hate speech"--which, of course, must be whacked out of existence every time the mole shows its ugly head.  

Such protagonists, however, are genuinely "dumb and dumber".  Here is the latest folly:

A Mayoral candidate has been accused of age, gender and race-based "hate speech", prompting a confidential council committee to recommended police involvement.  The political race hate stoush is brewing in Rotorua, with councillor Tania Tapsell branding online comments made by Mayoral candidate Reynold​ Macpherson as "totally unacceptable".

The row centres on an online post made by Macpherson on the Facebook page of the Rotorua District Residents & Ratepayers' (RDRR) lobby group on May 14.  The post, a response to a video in which Tapsell encourages more young people to stand for council, is entitled "Beware the charismatic pitch of the Pied Piper".  [Stuff]

Apparently a complaint has now been laid with the police.

The Xenophobia of Two Radical MP's

"Sit Down, and Shut Up"

The radical Left wants free speech for itself to be maintained at all costs.  It also wants free speech to be denied every other occupant of the public square.  

Karl Du Fresne, a serious journalist, has written a piece which hoists upon the proverbial petard some of our worst agitators against free speech.  He is reflecting upon the behaviour of the  "sit down, and shut up" brigade in the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings.

PERHAPS all . . . can be forgiven as a collective rush of blood to the head, brought about by the shock of the appalling events of March 15. But far less excusable is the manner in which prominent people, many of them on the public payroll, exploited the deaths of 50 innocent people to further an ideological agenda.

By this I mean people like the Green MPs Golruz Ghahraman and Marama Davidson. In Parliament, Ghahraman blamed unnamed fellow MPs and breakfast radio “shock jocks” – presumably meaning NewstalkZB’s Mike Hosking – for the “hate speech” that she claims led to the killings. (Hosking, incidentally, is another bête-noire of the Left, and for the same reason as Jordan Peterson: his daily commentaries connect with a large number of New Zealanders who are not racist or xenophobic and reject extremist ideology of both the Right and Left.)

Ghahraman, a highly accomplished self-publicist, was in such a rush to apportion blame that she wasn’t prepared to wait before making a considered response based on facts and evidence rather than supposition, assumption and prejudice. And why should she, when it was so much easier to make sweeping, unsubstantiated and emotive assertions about the killings being caused by “hate speech” (undefined), “white supremacy” and “gratuitous racism”?

Lacking Self-Awareness A Sign of Dementia, They Say

Lords of Conscience, Oozing Arrogance and Suppurating Hate

Picture this scene.  An elderly gentleman with a bouffant hair-style ascends a small platform in Hyde Park.  He begins to declaim the destructive influence of media in the lives of ordinary citizens.  He fears greatly the influence of the "Great Eye" installed in every home in the nation.  In the depths of night, a malevolent glow from the Great Eye begins to gain incandescent strength, he warns.  Hundreds of rapid micro-messages are beamed into the unsuspecting minds of all in the house.  The Great Eye is evil incarnate, he shouts.  Suddenly two burly policeman rush at the man, mount his soapbox, throw him to the ground, cuff him, and frogmarch him to a nearby police car. 

Next day, the regime explains its draconian actions.  "He was guilty of 'hate speech', 'fake news' and 'misinformation'.  Therefore, he had to be silenced.  He was manifestly a great danger to society, etc. etc.

Now, we would expect that, were normality reigning, ninety-five percent of the general population would be aghast.  Ok, so the guy with the bouffant hair-style might be a bit whacky with his conspiracy theories, but it's a free country, and free speech is a fundamental right.  Let someone stand up to counter his claims and demonstrate that the evil Great Eye is a myth. 

Flip over the Atlantic to the United States.

Free Speech Only For Those Approved

A Pot Calling a Kettle Black

One of the enduring characteristics of the modern liberal is his intolerance.  He demands free speech for himself and censorship for everyone else.  Particularly, those who have contrary views must be silenced.  

There are a variety of ways to silence opponents.  One is to rabble rouse and express paroxysms of anger.  Then, in a clever sleight of hand, one transfers the guilt and responsibility for one's anger to the one who made one angry.   "You make me so angry, the authorities must issue a silencing order, an indictment, a fine, a prison sentence. It matters not, but pay you must."

In a more educated age, such sleights of hand would have been mocked out of existence.

Another way to silence opponents is to ascend a soap box and issue a fatwa against the offensive speaker by presuming to pity those who have ostensibly taken offence.  "How dare you offend so many people!  You are an anti-social bigot.  You are doing great harm to others.  You must be silenced for your offensive speech."

A third variant is to trot out an ultimate mover and shaker: the spectre of "hate-speech".  The problem with "hate-speech" of course is that one's guilt is determined by the perceptions and  reactions of others.  One will claim to be "triggered" by your words.  In this context, "triggered" means jumping off the deep end and alleging that someone's speech had dredged up all kinds of bad memories, fears, and vulnerabilities.  Others will claim to be deeply hurt and offended by one's allegedly hateful speech.  Others will claim not to be offended on their own account, but on behalf of someone else.  And so it rolls.

In New Zealand we have a resident hater who writes opinion columns for the NZ Herald.  Clearly she hates big corporates.  She writes with invective laced passion against companies like Fonterra who, to her  mind, are responsible for most of what ails the human race.  Here's a sample:

Rising Authoritarianism

Shut Up, Shut Down, And Shut Out

One of the surest indications that an opponent is either pedalling a shonky argument or he is too incompetent to press his case intelligently is when he attacks the opponent (ad hominem) or attempts to silence him.  What has been dubbed the "new authoritarianism of the Left" has all the hallmarks.

We see it on every hand these days.  We will doubtless continue to see it.  The whole brouhaha resembles a dirty bomb: lots of heat, not much light, but plenty of poison.

The laziness of the Left over climate change is a case in point.  Not willing to face up to the debate, it sought to elude the argument by leap frogging it, declaring "the debate is over; the science is settled".  This casts  opponents as reactionary idiots--a modern type of flat-earthers, or geo-centric astronomers.  But anyone who knew even the barest basics of science, or the elementary principles of logic, or the primary hermeneutics of the scientific method knew instantly this was balderdash.  Feeding hypothetical projections into an electronic calculator to "prove" the reality of global warming has been the biggest instance of question-begging since Adam was a boy.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Not Enough of a Chump

Friday, June 7, 2013 10:12 am

Douglas Wilson

 

 Having watched some (usually reasonable) talking heads go on about the Verizon monstrosity, and then the PRISM thing — Grendel’s mother — I am struck once again with how so many modern conservatives miss the point. They do not understand the central principle of limited government. They do not understand what it means to be governed by men who understand what the rule of law is supposed to mean. They do not get it — and these are the conservatives.

The point (at this juncture) is not what the government does or does not do. If our current foolishness keeps up much longer, that will become the point soon enough, but it is not quite the point yet. The point is not what the government has done or will do. Free men care about what the government is allowed to be in a position to do.

Free men don’t want a government that doesn’t get into your email. Free men want a government that isn’t in any position to get into your email.

Media Controls

It's OK When The Good Guys Want It

One would have thought that folk would be viscerally reactive to any proposal to extend state power and control.  After all New Zealand participated in two World Wars ostensibly to defend against state tyrannies of various kinds.  We have witnessed in our recent past the death of approximately one hundred million people throughout the twentieth century as a result of state power, oppression, and vicious persecution of citizens and people the State did not like.

Yet the West remains remarkably sanguine about the powers of the State.  The reasons for this myopia are probably facile.  "We won the wars, so states becoming bloody and tyrannical applies to those who were defeated, not our government.  We and our government are the good guys."  Or, "our government would never become tyrannical: we are a democracy."  Or, "Western governments are devoted to protecting the rights of the poor and underprivileged; they are antipathetic to those tyrants that killed millions." 

Meanwhile whilst sleeping peacefully in our beds, the powers of Western government have grown exponentially: we respond by nodding peacefully in our slumbers.  But every now and again a litmus issue arises and we see just how tenuous our freedoms have become.

Media Defalcation

Not How the Press Works

The media in the US (and the West generally for that matter) is largely in the tank for Obama.  He appears to have an unlimited, never-ending supply of "free passes".  Most recently he and his administration made a huge mistake over the assault upon the US consulate in Benghazi.  Obama and Hillary Clinton and the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice rushed to the microphones to declare that the violence was a reaction to an anti-Islamic video produced in America.  The sub-text was "the US is to blame; one of us caused the violence; mea culpa, mea maxima culpa". 

Unfortunately for that particular spin, it is now abundantly clear that the attack upon the embassy was planned long in advance: it was a military operation, and had nothing to do with provocation from an amateur DVD.  More alarming is the administration's ignoring of warnings which were delivered to the US about an imminent attack.

Letter From Oslo About Censorship

Censoring Naomi Riley 

She was fired for having the courage to state the obvious.
By John Fund
May 12, 2012
National Review Online

Oslo— The Oslo Freedom Forum is an annual event sponsored by the New York–based Human Rights Foundation, which brings together dissidents and journalists from all over the world to show that people of good will can promote basic freedoms without an overlay of ideology.

Censorship, both official and self-imposed, is an important theme here. We have heard stories from brave journalists such as Ecuador’s Nicolas Perez and Kosovo’s Jeta Xharra of efforts to silence them for expressing views unpopular with officials or special interests. So it was strange to be here and read that one of my friends and former journalistic colleagues back home in the U.S. has been fired merely for speaking her mind.

Something Rotten in Denmark

The Boon of a Disinterested Free Press

A free, active, disinterested press has sometimes been called the Fourth Estate of government.  When it does its job properly the benefits of its constraint upon abuse of power are significant.  The corollary is also true: when the press abuses its position and tolerates conflicts between its own, commercial interests and the impartial truth it can do great damage to the body politic.  Regrettably, we have seen far too much of the latter: a self-interested Press sensationalising stories to generate headlines, gain attention, and increase subscriptions.  When this happens, truth is the first casualty.  Civic freedom is the next. 

Here is a prima facie example of the salutary power of the Fourth Estate--a free press--properly used.