Battle of Ideas
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Battle of Ideas
Off to London to press the flesh & recruit podcast guests
Morning all, I stayed off TwitterX for a bit (apart from retweeting media appearances) because it really was turning into a Hellsite, even with careful management of notification filters. Since Wednesday’s Zoom chat with Lorenzo I’ve also been a bit scarce around here.
While away from the socials, I did visit the good folks at the
to talk about (you guessed it) Australia’s Voice referendum… and also how the Metropolitan Police now consider themselves experts in Muslim theology.Have a watch if you’re curious. Lotus Eaters have an exceptionally cool studio, by the way.
I’m back on the socials now, and off to Battle of Ideas this weekend. You will no doubt see me twittering about various panels while I’m in the audience.
This year, I get to go around and recruit people for my Law & Liberty podcast while not having to prepare any speeches, debates, or readings. That’s unusual for me (normally I have to sing for my supper) and I’m quite looking forward to it.
If you’re going to be there, do say hello.
Housekeeping: the next piece in Lorenzo Warby’s series runs on Monday.
Battle of Ideas
Great dialog with Lotus Eaters. However, as I said before, the 'tribal' or 'aboriginal' identification is nonsense on stilts if there are more than 50% of other admixtures. The middle guy is kind of clueless in his tribal claims - you are born to the tribe - therefore you belong to the tribe. I am coming from a position of the 'anywhere' guy that certainly prefers to identify as American (citizenship, etc.), and when visiting old country can feel the officialdom still believing they have some large fraction of ownership because one was born there (even not having a citizenship there), nothing to say if I started to count over the generations ancestries - quite a number - and potential claims or lack of such.
Slightly distorting the original meaning of the proposition, one could claim 'there is no true Scotsman', because every Scotsman has some admixture and can claim some other ancestry, even if it is 1/128 genome fraction. Which is tempting to some, if they can slurp some benefits off the commons, isn't it? I know, I know, there is a mountain of bullshit that can be built up on this notion, and is. Like, what if some of the admixtures have their own oppressed status; let's build a pyramid? Love this saying 'nonsense on stilts'.
This is why I am saying, if one has 50% or more of racial or tribal admixture other than what your claim is - figure your grievances within your own genome or person, which part is oppressor and which is oppressed, and leave the rest of us alone. Or simpler, nonsense on stilts in any proportion.
Wonderful sumation of the recent referendum for the Lotus Eaters, Helen. Just a further comment about compulsory voting. It pretty well eliminates the possibility of voter registration fraud as practiced on a huge scale in the USA with no real hope of correction. So much for 'rights'. What about your right not to have your vote cancelled by a voter who is 150 years old?
The same could be argued for Australia's highly regulated immigration policies. If we contrast them to unregulated shambolic messes in USA and the UK, citizen's 'rights' still have some reality in Oz, despite the systems being deeply flawed and corrupted here as elsewhere. Thanks Helen. I look forward to your podcasts.