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The latest reason to be against freedom

It makes people nervous:

Critics of the 30-year rise in the belief system that holds that economic and social wellbeing originates in as much individualism and free market as possible (along with diminished social, public and state institutions) usually focus on the exterior consequences, ranging from heightened inequality to weakening rates of innovation, investment and productivity. They are right, but there is another less frequently made criticism – what this worldview is doing to our mental lives.

Not just nervous, but anxious.

Well, bring back communism then is what I say. Can’t be having with that, can we, people a little upset at the choices they have.

53 thoughts on “The latest reason to be against freedom”

  1. “Teenagers, for instance, need parents who understand that parenting is less about being friends with their children – partners in their kids’ exercise of choice. Rather, parenting is about creating strong families in which parents have to lead and exercise authority – havens from the 24/7 intrusiveness of social media.”

    Stopped clock, and all that…

  2. I didn’t realise that ADD was caused by anxiety, or was it thrown in to get to the percentage he wanted

  3. Has anyone left a comment along the lines that, having so many choices of newspaper is confusing and causing people anxiety – so everyone should just be forced to read The Times, by law?

    (I don’t click on grauniad links.)

  4. Hutton, dear Hutton.

    With nobody handing him any more businesses to wreck the cunt thinks to have a go at providing the same socialist service for society and family.

    He is hardly the first leftist slime to come up with the idea and a far from competent practitioner of it.

  5. So Much For Subtlety

    The Roosevelt administration was creating jobs for philosophy majors so they paid some of them to go around and interview former slaves.

    Oddly enough a rather large percentage of those slaves expressed regret at the end of slavery. They liked having people who said they cared for them also make all their important decisions for them. They found freedom a bit of a challenge.

    I am sure the average Guardian reader can relate.

  6. I was just reading that book on my Kindle (fun stuff to be found in the freebie section). Just about every one of the ex-slaves (all of whom were 80 ish or more at the interview time) said they were economically better off as slaves.

  7. So Much For Subtlety

    Tim Worstall – “Just about every one of the ex-slaves (all of whom were 80 ish or more at the interview time) said they were economically better off as slaves.”

    Well the economy of the South as a whole collapsed. Slaves moved into sharecropping which is a lot more market oriented. That is, no one feeds them in the off season. I can believe they were worse off economically.

    But I think that Blacks really miss that paternalism and secretly want it back. That is why they keep demanding things from White people. Drug laws were pushed by people like Chuck Rangel but then Blacks complained when they got what they asked for. They want schools that work but won’t tolerate firing teachers. They expect White people to wave a magic wand or something.

    So crime is really just young Black men acting out trying to attract White people’s attention. It is a cry for help. They want someone to tell them to pull their pants up, study hard and get a job.

  8. “Young women in particular are ever more transfixed with how they look to the point that, for a growing proportion, it is translating into mental health disorders with physical side-effects – bulimia, anorexia and self-harm.”

    Does Willie seriously think that young women are more obsessed with how they look than say, 50 years ago when the entire job that most young women had was getting a man to marry them?

    And a point about mental health: it’s rarely *thing*/*event* alone. You can have 30 soldiers go into a battle and 1 of them comes out suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But 30 don’t. How some people handle stress is different to others. Me, I do a lot of preparation so that I avoid it.

  9. Remember that poor leftie (his name escapes me) who just wanted a coffee, but was overwhelmed by the choice available? Never mind anxious, that was a full-blown panic attack!

  10. SMfS

    They want schools that work but won’t tolerate firing teachers.

    Gosh I get tired of hearing that. Crappy teachers are the effect, not the cause of crappy schools. All the non crappy teachers prefer to stack shelves or serve fries rather than get assaulted by their “students”. The teachers that are left are the ones that can’t stack shelves or serve fries.

  11. Bloke in North Dorset

    Anxiety about whether or not we are going to be fed today V worrying about missing out on Faceache for 30 minutes. Tough choice.

    More seriously, what The Stigler says. One of our team had a breakdown when we got back from the Falklands war, the rest of us were OK.

    I normally don’t agree with smfs, but he has a point. When working in SA I met at least one black who claimed they preferred Apartheid because there was less violence. I didn’t have the heart to tell them they were selfish bastards for wanting to inflict the system on others.

  12. @Stigler

    “You can have 30 soldiers go into a battle and 1 of them comes out suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But 30 don’t.”

    Inadvertently closer to reality than maybe you thought!

  13. So Much For Subtlety

    Roue le Jour – “Crappy teachers are the effect, not the cause of crappy schools. All the non crappy teachers prefer to stack shelves or serve fries rather than get assaulted by their “students”. The teachers that are left are the ones that can’t stack shelves or serve fries.”

    Schools aren’t crappy. People are. It is either the teachers or the students or perhaps both (with the parents thrown in for good measure). In the end I hope children of African origin are teachable. All the evidence to the contrary.

    Yes, after dealing with feral inner city yoof sensible people get jobs elsewhere. But what is to be done? The ones that remain are useless. The tragic story is Michelle Rhee’s attempt to fix the DC school system. She offered 100% pay rises in exchange for an end to tenure and performance based pay. Teachers reluctantly took it.

    The voters removed the mayor and fired Rhee.

    However she did have the right approach – better pay to attract better teachers and pay linked to performance. I would like to see more discipline, of the hands-on variety, and best of all would be to force the male students to do an hour of running in the morning to burn off some energy.

  14. So Much For Subtlety

    The Stigler – “Does Willie seriously think that young women are more obsessed with how they look than say, 50 years ago when the entire job that most young women had was getting a man to marry them?”

    I do actually. The sexual market has got much more competitive. 50 years ago, a girl just had to turn up and she could get married. Now they have to offer anal.

    And their entire job is still to get married. Whatever women say look at what they do. They do not go to university for a great career. They do so to find a husband.

    “You can have 30 soldiers go into a battle and 1 of them comes out suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But 30 don’t.”

    There is some evidence that PTSD doesn’t exist.

  15. So Much For Subtlety

    Bloke in North Dorset – “I didn’t have the heart to tell them they were selfish bastards for wanting to inflict the system on others.”

    Why are they being selfish? They are trading off the enormous number of Black South Africans who are raped and murdered every year against the mild inconvenience of the apartheid system.

    Isn’t that a rational enough trade off even if you do not agree with his logic?

  16. Tim Worstall,

    “Just about every one of the ex-slaves (all of whom were 80 ish or more at the interview time) said they were economically better off as slaves.”

    That may be to do with being 80, and that people were generally a lot poorer at that age.

    Plus, I’m not sure that slaves with more reasonable masters actually had it much worse than farmhands at the time.

    Put those two things together and it might be worse.

    What’s the book, by the way?

  17. Search on something like “works progress administration slave testimony”, something like that,. Library of congress volume, pretty sure.

  18. So Much For Subtlety

    People are strange.

    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18912/18912-h/18912-h.htm

    Project #1655
    Henry Grant
    Columbia, S. C.

    REFLECTIONS OF EZRA ADAMS

    EX-SLAVE 83 YEARS OLD

    Ezra Adams is incapable of self-support, owing to ill health. He is very well taken care of by a niece, who lives on the Caughman land just off S. C. #6, and near Swansea, S. C.

    “My mammy and pappy b’long to Marster Lawrence Adams, who had a big plantation in de eastern part of Lancaster County. He died four years after de Civil War and is buried right dere on de old plantation, in de Adams family burying grounds. I was de oldest of de five chillun in our family. I ‘members I was a right smart size plowboy, when freedom come. I think I must of been ’bout ten or eleven years old, then. Dere’s one thing I does know; de Yankees didn’t tech our plantation, when they come through South Carolina. Up in de northern part of de county they sho’ did destroy most all what folks had.

    “You ain’t gwine to believe dat de slaves on our plantation didn’t stop workin’ for old marster, even when they was told dat they was free. Us didn’t want no more freedom than us was gittin’ on our plantation already. Us knowed too well dat us was well took care of, wid a plenty of vittles to eat and tight log and board houses to live in. De slaves, where I lived, knowed after de war dat they had abundance of dat somethin’ called freedom, what they could not wat, wear, and sleep in. Yes, sir, they soon found out dat freedom ain’t nothin’, ‘less you is got somethin’ to live on and a place to call home. Dis livin’ on liberty is lak young folks livin’ on love after they gits married. It just don’t work. No, sir, it las’ so long and not a bit longer. Don’t tell me! It sho’ don’t hold good when you has to work, or when you gits hongry. You knows dat poor white folks and niggers has got to work to live, regardless of liberty, love, and all them things. I believes a person loves more better, when they feels good. I knows from experience dat poor folks feels better when they has food in deir frame and a few dimes to jingle in deir pockets. I knows what it means to be a nigger, wid nothin’. Many times I had to turn every way I knowed to git a bite to eat. I didn’t care much ’bout clothes. What I needed in sich times was food to keep my blood warm and gwine ‘long.

    “Boss, I don’t want to think, and I knows I ain’t gwine to say a word, not a word of evil against deir dust lyin’ over yonder in deir graves. I was old enough to know what de passin’ ‘way of old marster and missus meant to me. De very stream of lifeblood in me was dryin’ up, it ‘peared lak. When marster died, dat was my fust real sorrow. Three years later, missus passed ‘way, dat was de time of my second sorrow. Then, I ‘minded myself of a little tree out dere in de woods in November. Wid every sharp and cold wind of trouble dat blowed, more leaves of dat tree turnt loose and went to de ground, just lak they was tryin’ to follow her. It seem lak, when she was gone, I was just lak dat tree wid all de leaves gone, naked and friendless. It took me a long time to git over all dat; same way wid de little tree, it had to pass through winter and wait on spring to see life again.

    “I has farmed ‘most all my life and, if I was not so old, I would be doin’ dat same thing now. If a poor man wants to enjoy a little freedom, let him go on de farm and work for hisself. It is sho’ worth somethin’ to be boss, and, on de farm you can be boss all you want to, ‘less de man ‘low his wife to hold dat ‘portant post. A man wid a good wife, one dat pulls wid him, can see and feel some pleasure and experience some independence. But, bless your soul, if he gits a woman what wants to be both husband and wife, fare-you-well and good-bye, too, to all love, pleasure, and independence; ’cause you sho’ is gwine to ketch hell here and no mild climate whenever you goes ‘way. A bad man is worse, but a bad woman is almost terrible.

    “White man, dere is too many peoples in dese big towns and cities. Dere is more of them than dere is jobs to make a livin’ wid. When some of them find out dat they can’t make a livin’, they turns to mischief, de easy way they thinks, takin’ widout pay or work, dat which b’longs to other people. If I understands right, de fust sin dat was committed in de world was de takin’ of somethin’ dat didn’t b’long to de one what took it. De gentleman what done dis was dat man Adam, back yonder in de garden. If what Adam done back yonder would happen now, he would be guilty of crime. Dat’s how ‘ciety names sin. Well, what I got to say is dis: If de courts, now, would give out justice and punishment as quick as dat what de Good Master give to Adam, dere would be less crime in de land I believes. But I ‘spose de courts would be better if they had de same jurisdiction as de Master has. Yes, sir, they would be gwine some then.

    “I tells you, dis gittin’ what don’t b’long to you is de main cause of dese wars and troubles ’bout over dis world now. I hears de white folks say dat them Japanese is doin’ dis very thing today in fightin’ them Chinamens. Japan say dat China has done a terrible crime against them and de rest of de world, when it ain’t nothin’ but dat they wants somethin’ what don’t belong to them, and dat somethin’ is to git more country. I may be wrong, anyhow, dat is what I has heard.

    “What does I think de colored people need most? If you please sir, I want to say dis. I ain’t got much learnin’, ’cause dere was no schools hardly ’round where I was brung up, but I thinks dat good teachers and work is what de colored race needs worser than anything else. If they has learnin’, they will be more ashame to commit crime, most of them will be; and, if they has work to do, they ain’t gwine to have time to do so much wrong. Course dere is gwine to be black sheeps in most flocks, and it is gwine to take patience to git them out, but they will come out, just as sho’ as you is born.

    “Is de colored people superstitious? Listen at dat. You makes me laugh. All dat foolishness fust started wid de black man. De reason they is superstitious comes from nothin’ but stomp-down ignorance. De white chillun has been nursed by colored women and they has told them stories ’bout hants and sich lak. So de white chillun has growed up believin’ some of dat stuff ’til they natchally pass it on from generation to generation. Here we is, both white and colored, still believin’ some of them lies started back when de whites fust come to have de blacks ’round them.

    “If you wants to know what I thinks is de best vittles, I’s gwine to be obliged to omit (admit) dat it is cabbage sprouts in de spring, and it is collard greens after frost has struck them. After de best vittles, dere come some more what is mighty tasty, and they is hoghead and chittlings wid ‘tatoes and turnips. Did you see dat? Here I is talkin’ ’bout de joys of de appetite and water drapping from my mouth. I sho’ must be gittin’ hongry. I lak to eat. I has been a good eater all my life, but now I is gittin’ so old dat ‘cordin’ to de scriptures, ‘De grinders cease ’cause they are few’, and too, ‘Those dat look out de windows be darkened’. My old eyes and teeth is ’bout gone, and if they does go soon, they ain’t gwine to beat dis old frame long, ’cause I is gwine to soon follow, I feels. I hope when I does go, I can be able to say what dat great General Stonewall Jackson say when he got kilt in de Civil War, ‘I is gwine to cross de river and rest under de shade of de trees’.”

    [HW: Ezra Adams, Swansea (about 10m. south of Columbia)]

  19. These anxious people need Will to guide them. Will doesn’t get anxious. Will is not of the lumpen proletariat. Will is a wise man, wise enough to ignore all of the previous instances where such wisdom was a catastrophic failure.

    Will will save them by fucking up their lives, just as he saved the Industrial Society. The ex-employees of the Industrial Society are no longer anxious, as Will saved them.

  20. SMfS

    Money isn’t the answer. Private school teachers with good results are often paid less than public school teachers.

    The thing that annoys me is, British public schools have hundreds of years experience educating young men, then along comes a bunch of intellectually challenged year zero communists who think they can pull a better system out of their collective arses. It isn’t education, education education, it’s discipline, discipline, discipline. If you can’t control yourself, you’re never going to control anything else, like your life, for example.

  21. “But, bless your soul, if he gits a woman what wants to be both husband and wife, fare-you-well and good-bye, too, to all love, pleasure, and independence”

    Wise man.

  22. “In 1980, 4% of Americans suffered a mental disorder associated with anxiety. Today half do.”

    No they don’t. Your study from wherever might show they do, but they don’t.

    Mental health issues are real and should be taken seriously. This though is not a serious study; it is the ultimate 1st World exercise of the self-righteous interviewing the self-pitying.

  23. “The suffering of a ‘mental illness’ also seems to be a status signal among many young women. ”
    This is something I find with the alternative health proselytizers. Endlessly lauding snake oil remedies. I tell them “Why would I want to try these? I’m a man in my mid sixties, lives the life of someone in their twenties. The only illness I experience is the occasional slight cold” They look at me like I’m some sort of failure. That I lack the “experience”. I’m low status & to be dismissed as irrelevant. High status is to succumb to cancer whilst self-medicating with aromatherapy..

  24. Oh those universal themes. I have a number of middle class Labour supporter acquaintances who are outraged that Ken Livingstone should stand accused of bigotry. Look the say, he’s researched his stuff and has academic support for his claims. And Mrphy’s blog is stuffed full of useful idiots who hunt down a communist Jew happy to say Zionism does not really represent what Jews really think, so it isn’t racist to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

    And I point those acquaintances towards our resident Thick.Racist.Prick and his, er, research that proves – proves godammit – that blacks secretly hanker after a lovely life of being cared for by their superior white master. Because blacks can’t be educated you know.

    So Will Hutton is right, we really don’t want choice. In fact we can’t handle it.

  25. Tell me SMFS, we are taking about black children being educated in our lovely white society aren’t we. So “all” the evidence that shows they cannot be educated; is this because they are genetically inferior?

  26. Dunno, Rustybollocks.
    There would seem to be considerable correlation between poor educational achievement of white kids & the proportion of black kids, in the education system that’s educating them.

  27. After all Tinribs–the shining state of sub-Saharan Africa shows how right you are.

    Isn’t that where you go for all those new streamlined ARC reactors that you are into nowadays? What would you do with out the technological powerhouse that is the Dark Continent.

    Why– you would be a dim bulb such that even old Albert Steptoe would not deign to have you illuminate his outside bog on dark winter nights.

  28. So Bloke in Spain and Ecks are unable to argue to the point and need to abuse ; well we knew that.

    So I see that they don’t feel like answering the simple questions. Does “all” the evidence show that blacks cannot be educated? Is it because they are genetically inferior?

    Actually don’t bother. I’m not actually interested in what you think: ” think” being a charitable way of describing it.

  29. The problem is, 110% of sweeping generalisations are wrong. Then add in the tendency to compare “our” middle class with their “lower” class.

    Gun crime in the US is pretty much a black problem, and Africa is wreck, and worse than that in some places.

    On the other hand, governance in Europe wasn’t always a great success, particularly not during the last century. Should white people not be allowed to vote?

  30. “The problem is, 110% of sweeping generalisations are wrong.”

    Unless the sweeping generalisation is that Muslims are bat shit crazy to believe that any god would choose an evil, murdering, thieving, shit of a pedophile as his (or her) special messenger, in which case the generalisation is 110% correct.

  31. “They are right, but there is another less frequently made criticism – what this worldview is doing to our mental lives.”

    And what about their worldview does to the mental life of those who don’t want paternalism? I feel anxious when the left are in power. Every day there’s another a further announcement of how they will take more power away from me.

    But apparently the mental lives of non-leftists don’t count.

  32. SMFS,
    > best of all would be to force the male students to do an hour of running in the morning to burn off some energy

    Scotland do that already, the daily mile. The hard part is persuading the teachers to take part.

    Ken,
    Yes, quite. Two main reasons: (1) Immigrants are by definition more motivated than those who stay behind, so they work harder. (2) Schools in rough areas get a metric fuck-ton of money showered on them, which schools in average areas don’t. From the link below, schools in Tower Hamlets (inner London) get £7,000 a year per pupil whereas schools in Cambridgeshire get just £4,000. http://www.sec-ed.co.uk/news/how-much-per-pupil-funding-will-your-school-get
    All that extra money gets results.

  33. “So Bloke in Spain and Ecks are unable to argue to the point and need to abuse ”

    Oh the irony, it burns!!!!

  34. “Unless the sweeping generalisation is that Muslims are bat shit crazy to believe that any god would choose an evil, murdering, thieving, shit of a pedophile as his (or her) special messenger”

    Those of us brought up on the New Testament and God Is Love tend to assume that being loving is part of a God’s job description.

    This just isn’t the case. Mount Olympus is or was stuffed to the gunnels with ne’er-do-wells.

    So, believing in Mohammed is no odder than believing in Jesus.

  35. Jim

    So you can’t engage with the question either. OK, but you could go and get a hobby instead.

  36. @ Rustybollocks
    if you want the point argued, which wasn’t what I was attempting to do, I doubt it’s genetic either. I’d be more aligned with the evidence ken’s cited.
    I’ve also had considerable experience with both the Afro-Caribbean community & the African diaspora. I lived with a member for three years. It’s cultural, not genetic.
    Actually, if it was genetic, it’d hardly be a problem.
    Let’s say, for the point of argument, blacks score more to the lower end on some curve of intellect. But there’s going to be large numbers of whites occupying that area of the curve. And whites seem to be able to build functioning societies that include whites occupying those areas.

  37. Anxiety started to rise in the mid eighties, coincidentally doctors stopped prescribing diazepam (valium) at the same time, also coincidental is that diazepam camou out of patent at the same time.

    Three coincidences at the same time is synchronicital but ib this case, not serendipitous

  38. So Much For Subtlety

    Ironman – “Tell me SMFS, we are taking about black children being educated in our lovely white society aren’t we. So “all” the evidence that shows they cannot be educated; is this because they are genetically inferior?”

    I specifically said I hoped it was due to cultural reasons. But it does look genetic, yes. It is not just our lovely White society that fails. Newly independent Black countries also fail. If White racism was a problem Jamaica ought to be an intellectual powerhouse. It is actually going backwards. So is most of Sub-Saharan Africa.

    Black students simply do poorly in any and all education system they are placed in. They do poorly educated by progressives – especially poorly actually – they do poorly educated by Black nationalists, they do poorly educated by Marxists. They just do poorly. They seem to do best when they are educated by the Catholic Church or by White racists actually.

    There is some cause and it is surely not going to be discovered by your self-righteous rants and efforts to intimidate people into silence.

    Ironman – “So Bloke in Spain and Ecks are unable to argue to the point and need to abuse ; well we knew that.”

    Well that is funny.

    “So I see that they don’t feel like answering the simple questions. Does “all” the evidence show that blacks cannot be educated? Is it because they are genetically inferior?”

    Every single effort to educate Black children has failed. It is not that people do not want to succeed. It is not that money has not been thrown at the problem – some inner city London schools cost more than Eton. The two most funded education districts in the US are New York and Baltimore. But nothing works. You need to accept that.

    ken – “Poor Black African children educated in this country do better than White British poor.”

    Are the African children poor? How many of them are children of diplomats and doctors? It is nice that they have gone out of their way to find a White population that they can compare to a Black population. But first they have to look at the lowest end of the White spectrum. Then they have to find the highest end of the Black spectrum. And it is a spectrum. We are all distributed on a curve. We tend to take African immigrants if they have high IQs. That will help their children. But this is hardly reassuring.

  39. So Much For Subtlety

    Jack C – “On the other hand, governance in Europe wasn’t always a great success, particularly not during the last century. Should white people not be allowed to vote?”

    Actually governance in Europe has long been a huge success and if the last century proves anything, it is that it is too successful. The Africans could not carry something like the Holocaust out because they are too disorganized.

    No African state has the ability to track down the grand parents of every citizen in order to determine if they were minorities before putting them on trains to send half way across the continent to be gassed. Their genocides are less sophisticated. See Rwanda.

  40. Really, SMFS?
    European governance too successful? We were lucky, in the 19th Century, to have the British Army and Navy to force a reasonable peace, and lucky in the 20th to have the Americans.

    I agree that the Holocaust took ruthless efficiency, but it was not a mark of good governance, and was not actually that sophisticated.

  41. So Much For Subtlety

    Jack C – “We were lucky, in the 19th Century, to have the British Army and Navy to force a reasonable peace, and lucky in the 20th to have the Americans.”

    That is true but irrelevant. Because law and order even in places like Spain improved. So did education. The state in the West, all of them although at different rates, just got better at providing services. They always were fairly good in narrow areas. They got much better after the French Revolution.

    “I agree that the Holocaust took ruthless efficiency, but it was not a mark of good governance, and was not actually that sophisticated.”

    They tracked down every single Jew. They searched out every single Jewish woman even if they had converted to Catholicism and became nuns. What they wanted to do was ruthless but the fact that they could do it depended on centuries of good government that left them with the records, ration cards, the railways that ran on time, the habits of co-operation with the police and so on. The Third World can’t hope to do that.

  42. The Holocaust: one of Europe’s great triumphs

    Only on a blog populated by those who believe certain races are superior to others.

  43. The Holocaust: one of Europe’s great triumphs

    You really are a twat at times, Ironman

  44. SMFs

    The tables in the report linked to above looks at children entitled to free school meals – generally seen as a proxy for being poor.

  45. “You really are a twat sometimes Ironman”

    Oh great observation. Just what is merited by claims of genetic superiority being demonstrated by how well we organised the Holocaust. Right up there with Diane Abbott’s “this is all a smear”.

  46. Other races and creeds who have made their own countries into shitholes–with it be admitted a lot of outside– mostly statist, socialist help– are free to live and thrive and/or exist as best they can in their own lands. I hope they all prosper eventually–altho only thro’ their own efforts not leftist handouts.

    My concern is that I do not want my country flooded with arseholes with a bad culture, bad beliefs and a proven track record–both in their own holes and increasingly over here–of bad behaviour. And piss on all the “anti-racist”–ie anti-white scum–who are trying to import them. Both the scum of the left and white, self-hating “liberal” weirdos like Ironman.

    If you want to help the benighted Tinribs, jet over there like in the movie. But they are not coming here to fuck things up more than things already are fucked up.

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