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Chris Rock’s New Special Exposes His Political Ignorance

Chris Rock’s New Special Exposes His Political Ignorance

by | Mar 8, 2023 |

A common claim among Democrats is that, “It’s not that people don’t want to be educated, they just haven’t been given the opportunity, thus government spending on education needs to increase.”

If there were ever a group of people capable of “educating” themselves it would be American celebrities.

Yet it seems as though there is a secret contest among them to see who could be the most historically, economically, and philosophically illiterate.

The most recent example comes from Chris Rock’s “Selective Outrage” Netflix special where he says, “It’s the Royal Family…they invented colonialism.”

Here is a brief list of empires who engaged in Colonialism before the Royal Family did:

  • Marhasi Empire
  • Islamic Empires
  • Akkadian Empire
  • Hittite empire
  • Assyrian Empire
  • Roman Empire
  • Babylonian Empire
  • Persian Empire
  • Shang Dynasty
  • Egyptian Empire
  • Zhou Dynasty
  • Macedonian Empire
  • Qin Dynasty
  • Han Dynasty
  • Armenian Empire
  • Xin Dynasty
  • Gallic Empire
  • Hunnic Empire
  • Latin Empire
  • Mongol Empire

Other examples from Rock’s “Selective Outrage”:

January 6th

“You see the Capitol riots? White men trying to overthrow the government, that they run!” – Chris Rock

It does not occur to the Social Justice Race Essentialist mind that people who are the same race (and gender) have differing ideas on what is just or unjust. Just because two people are of the same race and gender, it in no way means the person (or group) with power is acting on behalf of those who share their gender or race. It’s akin to saying: “How did a war occur in China between Mao’s Communists and Chiang’s Nationalists? They were all Chinese! How was there a Russian Civil War between Reds and Whites? They were all Russian!”

Ukraine

“America’s in horrible shape. We got it worse, than Ukraine. Yeah I said it…Ukraine is united, and America is clearly divided.” – Chris Rock

I guess after Rock researched the stark contrast between Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas supporting Viktor Yanukovych and those in 2014 supporting Petro Poroshenko leading to an eight-year civil war killing 14,000 people, Rock came to the conclusion that like White men, all Ukrainians are on the same page.

I was not aware that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was on the same page with the people who he enslaved via conscription to fight in his military, the political parties he banned, and the media he nationalized.

Jim Crow

Rock makes a great point at the end about the evils of Jim Crow Laws which forbid Blacks from seeing White dentists. It’s pure evil for a third party to forcibly restrict two consenting parties from engaging in a mutually beneficial voluntary economic exchange. This is the central goal of the Libertarian Institute, and on this issue we stand firmly with Chris Rock!

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War and Delusion: A Critical Examination

by | Mar 7, 2023 | ,

In this episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, Alex Bernardo sits down once again with Laurie Calhoun. Laurie is a philosopher, a cultural critic and an author. She is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute, where she regularly writes articles analyzing war and the military industrial complex. We discuss her 2013 book War and Delusion, a devastating philosophical and empirical critique of the ‘just war’ theory, which posits that there are conditions under which a war can be justly waged. We explore the inconsistencies of the just war theory, the medieval Christian assumptions that undergird it, the ways in which it has been consistently applied to legitimate American foreign policy, and how it has ultimately led us to war in Ukraine.

Media Referenced:
War and Delusion, Laurie Calhoun

Crime and Poverty

by | Mar 2, 2023 | ,

“The theory that crime is caused by poverty is not supported by the known facts. The very poor, in fact, tend to be just as law-abiding as the rich, and perhaps more so. To argue otherwise is to libel multitudes of people who keep to decency under severe difficulties, and in the face of constant temptation.”

—H. L. Mencken, Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks, 1956

Don’t Be Silent

by | Feb 28, 2023 | ,

We should reject the fashionable idea that one should never write or post anything that possibly could be used by bad people for bad purposes. That admonition brings two things to mind.

First, it fails its own test. If good people avoid a topic because even constructive analysis might be put to bad use, the very avoidance will likely fuel conspiracy theories about how this or that interest group controls the public debate. Thus the fashionable idea is self-subverting — much as the precautionary principle is.

Second, it reminds me of what Ludwig Wittgenstein, in a very different context, wrote in concluding his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” There are no chilling implications in Wittgenstein’s maxim because he literally meant can not, as opposed to may not. The same can’t be said for the fashionable maxim.

Can There Be Only One Race?

by | Feb 27, 2023 | ,

I’m old enough to remember this 1960s Lay’s Potato Chips commercial. (Hell, I’m almost old enough to remember when plays were in black and white!)  In the commercial a man (Bert Lahr, the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz) faces a challenge from the devil, who has a bag of Lay’s: “Bet you can’t eat one.” “That’s absolutely absurd,” Lahr says; of course he can eat one. After enjoying the chip he says, “I’ll have another,” to which the devil says, “Oh no. I said just one. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha….”

Admittedly, this is a long and winding road to my point: there can’t be only one race. Most people believe that human beings come in different genetic models: black, white, Asian, and a couple more. (Of course one can believe this without hating anyone.) But biologists and geneticists know better. There are no significantly distinct genetic groups of human beings that correspond to skin tone, hair texture, or other such visible features. Individuals within one grouping of superficially similar persons can have more genetic variation among themselves than they do with individuals in other superficial groupings. (We all are of African ancestry, though for some it’s more recent than for others.) As Barbara and Karen Fields discuss in Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, the idea of race grows out of the discriminatory practice of racism, not the other way around. In other words, the double standard people used in the treatment of others itself generated the justificatory concept of race. It’s like witchcraft.

Does it follow from this that, as humane people like to say, there’s only one race, the human race? I don’t think so. In this case 1 = 0. Leaving aside the biologists’ technical genetic concept of race (which has nothing to do with appearance), a concept of race would be useful only for making distinctions. But if there is only one race, then by definition, there are no distinctions to make. Therefore, one equals none.

We already have a perfectly good biological category for distinguishing human beings from other animals: species. So we have no need for the category of the human race. “Race” is worse than superfluous. It’s dangerously divisive.

Yes, Andrew Sullivan Demanded W. Bush Nuke Iraq

by | Feb 25, 2023 |

He wrote on October 17, 2001:

THE COMING CONFLICT: The sophisticated form of anthrax delivered to Tom Daschle’s office forces us to ask a simple question. What are these people trying to do? I think they’re testing the waters. They want to know how we will respond to what is still a minor biological threat, as a softener to a major biological threat in the coming weeks. They must be encouraged by the panic-mongering of the tabloids, Hollywood and hoaxsters. They must also be encouraged by the fact that some elements in the administration already seem to be saying we need to keep our coalition together rather than destroy the many-headed enemy. So the terrorists are pondering their next move. The chilling aspect of the news in the New York Times today is that the terrorists clearly have access to the kind of anthrax that could be used against large numbers of civilians. My hopes yesterday that this was a minor attack seem absurdly naïve in retrospect. So they are warning us and testing us. At this point, it seems to me that a refusal to extend the war to Iraq is not even an option. We have to extend it to Iraq. It is by far the most likely source of this weapon; it is clearly willing to use such weapons in the future; and no war against terrorism of this kind can be won without dealing decisively with the Iraqi threat. We no longer have any choice in the matter. Slowly, incrementally, a Rubicon has been crossed. The terrorists have launched a biological weapon against the United States. They have therefore made biological warfare thinkable and thus repeatable. We once had a doctrine that such a Rubicon would be answered with a nuclear response. We backed down on that threat in the Gulf War but Saddam didn’t dare use biological weapons then. Someone has dared to use them now. Our response must be as grave as this new threat. I know that this means that this conflict is deepening and widening beyond its initial phony stage. But what choice do we have? Inaction in the face of biological warfare is an invitation for more in a world where that is now thinkable. Appropriate response will no doubt inflame an already inflamed region, as people seek solace through the usual ideological fire. Either way the war will grow and I feel nothing but dread in my heart. But we didn’t seek this conflict. It has sought us. If we do not wage war now, we may have to wage an even bloodier war in the very near future. These are bleak choices, but what else do we have? [Italics his]

War is a Euphemism for Theft Funded Mass Murder

War is a Euphemism for Theft Funded Mass Murder

by | Feb 18, 2023 | ,

The libertarian’s basic attitude toward war must then be: it is legitimate to use violence against criminals in defense of one’s rights of person and property; it is completely impermissible to violate the rights of other innocent people. War, then, is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals.

– Murray N. Rothbard, Ph.D., War, Peace, and the State

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