Tag: education

This is the article by Gad Saad condemning celebrity virtue-signalers that was vanished by Psychology Today, most likely because it intellectually jiu-jitsued the historical communist tactic of medicalizing ideological opponents. Possibly also because he had the unseemly temerity to suggest that a celebrity actually read a book.

Back in 2009, I authored an article on this platform titled The Narcissism and Grandiosity of Celebrities.  Continuing this tradition, this past week on my social media platforms, I critiqued the virtue signalling that members of the privileged classes engage in. Here is what I wrote: 

“Let me explain yet again the source for all of the platitudinous virtue signalling. The truly privileged elites know that deep down they are frauds. They suffer from existential guilt. Hence, one of the ways by which they assuage the guilt albatross around their necks is to demonstrate to the world that they are truly compassionate, truly loving, truly caring, truly profound. Hence, they love all “undocumented” immigrants. They love Mother Earth. They love the ozone layer. They love BLM. They love socialism. They love inner cities. They hate the gentrification of neighbourhoods. They love mentors of color. They cherish diversity. They love LGBTQ movies. They adore queer architecture. They are better than you. More caring, more cultured, more empathetic. This permits them to sleep better at night. See, I’m not a fraud. I may be a gargantuan parasitic hedge fund bullshitter but I really care. I may be an overpaid BS actor but I fight for solar panels. Those fly over rubes deserve their lot in life. They are racists who bed their siblings. We are science supporters who fight against Mother Earth rapists whilst flying in our private jets. It is a classic ego defensive strategy that permits the ruling class to exist within their fractured selves. Save this thread. Memorize it. I’m offering you a deep psychological explanation of our times.”

Seth Rogen who had been tagged on Twitter regarding the latter, retorted as follows:

“I actually watched your video and it’s so stupid. Why was I a left wing socialist when I was broke and unemployed according to your brilliant theory?”

To which I replied:

“Thanks for watching. Many young people are socialists when they are driven by immature impulses of utopia. They then grow up. You are a grown man with tons of money. Your current stances are rooted in vacuous empty signalling rooted in a desire to belong in Hollywood. It takes zero courage to hold your stances within the entertainment ecosystem. You espouse bullshit rhetoric that wins you points at the cool kids’ parties but you are otherwise as ignorant as my out-of-order toaster. I’d be happy to chat with you on my show as you have a very large platform and as such you have the opportunity to actually make a difference. Stop succumbing to the herd mindset. Learn how to think critically. Learn the meaning and implications of socialism vs. capitalism. You are among the MOST privileged people in the history of humanity. And yet you walk around as though you are a Che Guevara revolutionary. You are the product of capitalism. If you are such a socialist, send me some of your money. I’m trying to build an interdisciplinary research institute. Live out your convictions. If you are a socialist, you have no business being the beneficiary of the most capitalist industry in the most capitalist country in the history of humanity. Don’t be a hypocritical fraud. Cheers amigo.”

In my recently released bestselling book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, I discuss the differences between virtue signalling and honest signalling. Here are two relevant excerpts from a section titled “Do Not Virtue-Signal”: 

“Each time that a terrorist attack takes place in some Western city, nauseating hordes of cowards do one of two things: 1) Change their social media handles to the flag of the country that was attacked; 2) Share a hashtag on Twitter to signal their solidarity with a given cause (#JeSuisCharlie following the terror killings at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris; #BringBackOurGirls, made famous by Michelle Obama, in support of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram). Politicians seek to outdo one another in offering vacuous “heartfelt” condolences while in many cases continuing to enact policies that are directly responsible for the terror attacks in question. In the great majority of instances, these are utterly useless endeavors meant to do nothing but advertise one’s supposed virtue to the world (hence the term virtue-signaling). It is a form of cheap and costless self-aggrandizing that feeds one’s ego. I must be a good person who truly cares, as evidenced by my progressive hashtag. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who engage in such platitudinous signaling are cowardly and meek.” (p. 178)

Later I added the following (pp. 180-181):

“During a highly publicized 2017 event held in Toronto, Oren Amitay, Jordan Peterson, and I were asked to identify our respective freedom of speech heroes. I responded that the ultimate heroes are those who risk their lives to defend such freedoms. I pointed to individuals from the Middle East (some of whom have been guests on my show) who are willing to defend these ideals knowing full well that they may pay the ultimate price. This is what having skin in the game looks like. This is costly virtue, not virtue-signaling. Over the past year or so, I have become good friends with Ensaf Haidar, the wife of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, and I had the pleasure of meeting her three lovely children at a dinner organized by the actor Mark Pellegrino and his wife. Raif is serving a ten-year prison sentence and was scheduled to receive one thousand lashes (“only” fifty of which have thus far been administered) for having the temerity to question, in a rather tepid manner, various religious and cultural realities in the region. Retweeting #JeSuisCharlie is impotent virtue-signaling; critiquing the Saudi regime from within Saudi Arabia is courage in action.”

Bottom line: In order for a signal to be an honest one, it must be handicapping; it must be costly to the one who emits the signal. Raif Badawi lived out his convictions. He engaged in costly signalling. Seth Rogen and other champagne socialists do not live out their convictions. They are vacuous parasitic virtue signallers who wear Che Guevara t-shirts from the luxury of their Malibu homes. Be the former and reject the latter.

The first three volumes of the 2020 edition of the Junior Classics are now available at Castalia Direct as well as on Amazon. The digital editions will be made available after they are sent to the backers. They are an ideal resource for homeschoolers.

• Vol. I Fairy Tales & Fables
• Vol. II Myths & Legends
• Vol. III Tales of Greece & Rome

Yes, Virginia, the 2020 edition of the Junior Classics is real at last. While we normally don’t bother printing samples before we ship orders to backers or flip the switch to activate release into the distribution channel, the large number of moving parts involved plus the sheer volume of books to be shipped inspired us to take an uncharacteristically safe approach to the process. Fortunately, our caution turned out to be unnecessary, which is why we have today begun placing the first orders to ship out the initial three volumes to the original backers of the project.

We are very appreciative of the incredible support that made it possible to turn this dream into reality, and also of the patience that allowed the production team to ensure that the project was done right.

The 2020 Edition of the Junior Classics features dozens of stories, even more classic illustrations, and the original artwork of Arkhaven’s Lacey Fairchild, and we are confident that this edition will come to be considered the definitive edition.

From the Preface to the 2020 Edition

For more than one hundred years the Junior Classics have been one of the great resources for teaching children to love reading and providing them with a lifelong taste for the Western literary canon.  These handsome books, containing short stories and selections from classic Western literature, have been passed down through the generations in many families, introducing boys and girls to Aesop, Homer, Bulfinch, and Virgil, and to Cervantes, Dickens, Poe, and Twain.

Wrapping time-honored tales in bright-colored covers, the Junior Classics proved irresistible to young readers over the years, reaching their aesthetic peak with the 1958 edition. Unfortunately, it was also then that the intellectual rot began, leading to the eventual demise of the series. A comparison with the 1918 edition reveals a methodical excision of the elements of Christianity and Americana that established the Junior Classics so firmly among God-fearing American families in the early part of the 20th Century. This process of secularization and intellectual enervation culminated in the 1992 edition, a literary abomination that further eviscerated the content and lowered the reading level to that of the barely literate. The title of the first volume, Let’s Read Together, amply demonstrates how a set of books intended to be read by children to inspire in them a love for quality literature devolved into books meant to be read to children to indoctrinate them.

Having witnessed the effect of the traditional Junior Classics on the reading habits of our own children, and observing the lengths to which homeschooling parents were willing to go to obtain the older books, we launched a crowdfunding campaign for the creation of a new edition of the Junior Classics, one that recaptures the spirit and purpose of the original.

This weekend is the last chance to order the Junior Classics Backer Edition Vols. 1-3 and to upgrade to the leather set. There will be the opportunity to purchase a leather set in the future, but no more upgrades from the hardcover sets will be available. We will leave the order pages active until midnight Sunday evening.

Now that we’ve ordered the proofs for final approval, there are only a few more days left to either a) order Vols. 1-3 of the Junior Classics hardcovers or b) preorder the 10-volume leather set before we start shipping the former. We have added a special Original Backer logo to the back of every hardcover produced in this first print run, and Original Backer’s Edition is also noted on the title page of each hardcover and leatherbound volume, as shown here. Subsequent print runs will precisely match the Original Backer’s Edition on the bookshelf, but will lack these signifiers.

Note the original artwork by Arkhaven’s Lacey Fairchild, which for Volume Three features the classic Greek tale of Hercules fighting the Hydra. It was our goal to produce the best edition of the Junior Classics to date, in terms of both aesthetics and content, and we are increasingly confident that the production team has managed to do that.

Atheists have largely come to grasp that their shiny, sexy, secular post-Christian society is never going to happen. Now it’s time for the multiculturalists to learn the same thing about their diverse, inclusive, equalitarian post-White society:

When Asian-American parents opposed the school district’s plans to enact its new “lottery” system in late October, the school district blasted the parents by stating they were “racist” and responsible for the “toxic culture” at the school. Parents were accused of furthering the “Asian supremacy” agenda by making their children work so hard; their children’s achievements were demoralizing African-American and Latino students.

One African-American parent stated it’s because of Asians hogging up all the spaces “Black people can’t catch up technologically because the ‘stupid Asians’ are keeping black people down out of fear they’d be overtaken.”

When one angry Asian-American parent responded “Trust me, you’ll never catch up. If you need to lower-standards to get in, you’ll never beat us,” a near physical fight broke loose.

Another Asian parent screamed, “First you blame white people, now you blame us!? Grow up! Study harder or go home!”

That’s the funny thing about societies. Replace the primary element, and what you end up with is something entirely different. Civic nationalism is, and always was, a lie.

This report doesn’t actually include homeschooling, but given the significantly better family outcomes that accompany Christian Protestant private schooling than either Roman Catholic private schooling or public schooling, it is quite safe to assume that homeschoolers are even more likely to end up in intact families, without experiencing either children out of wedlock or divorce:

Men and women who have been educated in a private school tend to be more likely to be married, less likely to have ever divorced, and less likely to have had a child outside of wedlock. Figure 1 displays the proportion of US adults from each school sector who are in intact marriages, have ever divorced, and have ever had a non-marital birth. All other figures in this report, like Figure 1, do not adjust for background demographic characteristics like race, ethnicity, parental education, age, and gender. Nonetheless, these patterns remain unchanged even when results are adjusted using a regression framework for demographic characteristics. Specifically,

• Adults who attended Protestant schools are more than twice as likely to be in an intact marriage as those who attended public schools. They are also about 50{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely than public-school attendees to have a child out of wedlock.
• Among those who have ever married, Protestant-school attendees are about 60{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely than public-school attendees to have ever divorced.
• Compared with public-school attendees, ever-married adults who attended a secular private school are about 60{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely to have ever divorced.
• Catholic-school attendees are about 30{5274a41d3bd2aa3d5829764fe19e8a7ecbc79c108731aad5f1ff2d292e60e2b4} less likely to have had a child out of wedlock than those who attended public schools.

The results detailed in this report suggest that boys and girls who attend private schools are more likely to avoid a nonmarital birth and to get and stay married. This pattern is especially pronounced among Protestant-school attendees, which suggests that these schools are more likely to foster a kind of “Protestant Family Ethic” among their students. This is an ethic that seems especially conducive to strong and stable families.

Of particular note is the complete failure of “missionary schooling” otherwise known as “sending your kids to public school to be a light unto the benighted godless masses”. That was always a transparently absurd excuse, as children are in the public schools to be indoctrinated, not to indoctrinate. But now there are statistics demonstrating how stupid that feeble rationalization always was.

The seven families have been selected and notified about the seven donated Castalia Library subscriptions they will be receiving. Each family will receive seven Library editions, the six books included in the annual subscription plus the seventh book to complete the Plutarch pair.

33 homeschooled children and 14 parents will be the beneficiaries of these beautiful donations.

My sincere thanks to the seven incredibly generous donors. You have planted acorns, and though you may never see the trees, you will know that it is thanks to you that they grow. Well done and thank you!

who very graciously donated an entire YEAR of Castalia Library to SIX  SEVEN families. The families will be alerted by email tonight. As I mentioned when the offer was made, Castalia will be adding LIVES Vol. I by Plutarch to the donations, so each of the six families selected will receive seven deluxe books bound in topgrain cowhide. I am truly amazed by the generousness of this community and the ready willingness shown by those who with more resources to help those with less, as well as the depth of the concern demonstrated for the future generations.

These donors will never sit in the shade of the trees they are planting, but they have gone out of their way to plant intellectual acorns nevertheless. Let us hope they turn out to be mighty oaks indeed.

As subscribers know, one of these seven books will be Summa Elvetica by yours truly, Book 7 in the Library subscription and Book I in the Library/Libraria sets of Arts of Dark and Light. I’m taking this opportunity to introduce the cover of the Library edition, seen below, and to announce that it will be a) a signed edition that is b) available as a one-off purchase to non-subscribers. We’re cutting the retail price from $150 to $115 due to the high level of interest in the book, and subscribers should note that they will receive a new discount code soon in the event they wish to purchase additional copies.

We won’t know what the print run will be until the end of December, but we will keep it under 2500.

This is excellent news for the future nations of the former United States:

While parents’ satisfaction with their child’s education has fallen, there has been a five-point uptick (to 10{fb585635b9f6189e33442b25caac15ec2544d7054f182b4f92840c6cee65accd}) in the percentage of parents who say their child will be home-schooled this year.

The question defines home schooling as “not enrolled in a formal school, but taught at home” so as to clearly distinguish home schooling from distance learning provided by a school in which they are enrolled.

Public school remains the most attended type of school, although it has dropped seven points, to 76{fb585635b9f6189e33442b25caac15ec2544d7054f182b4f92840c6cee65accd}, since last year. Far fewer parents say their child is enrolled in a private school (6{fb585635b9f6189e33442b25caac15ec2544d7054f182b4f92840c6cee65accd}), charter school (5{fb585635b9f6189e33442b25caac15ec2544d7054f182b4f92840c6cee65accd}) or parochial school (2{fb585635b9f6189e33442b25caac15ec2544d7054f182b4f92840c6cee65accd}).

This is remarkable, considering that when I first started advocating homeschooling on WND, only 2 percent of students were being homeschooled. Considering that homeschooling families tend to be larger than the norm, this may indicate that as many as 12 percent of all students are being homeschooled.

With more children being homeschooled than attend private and parochial schools combined, homeschooling is the new normal.