Kim Philby: did he ever have regrets?

The New Neo Posted on by

People like the patrician British double agent Kim Philby fascinate me. Are they natural cons who are drawn to the game aspect of spying? Are they True Believers? Psychopaths? Idealists? Narcissists? Some of the above? All of the above?

Kim Philby had an excellent education, and in fact it was at Cambridge that he became enamored of Communism. Nothing dissuaded him; not the excesses of Stalin, and not even—if you believe what he told the KGB after defecting in 1963—actually living in Soviet Russia, and seeing firsthand the mess there and the misery of its citizens:

Speaking as if from beyond the grave – his voice recorded during a talk he gave for KGB officers in 1977, 14 years after defecting to the Soviet Union – Philby is heard saying: “There is an awful lot of work for us to do it seems. I have no regrets whatsoever about the past, just the mistakes I made doing it.”

Quoting the Russian revolutionary Felix Dzerzhinsky – founder of the KGB’s forerunner the Cheka – Philby closes his speech in Russian by saying: “If I had a chance I would do it all again. I would do it exactly the same way.”

Lie? Truth? Rationalization? I think it’s the inability of most fanatics to change a fundamental set of beliefs, especially after betraying one’s country for the cause. It would take a lot more courage and a lot more honesty than Philby was likely to have possessed to have said: “I sold my country out for something horrific.”

There are some clues there about what happened in the beginning, though. For example, as with most and perhaps all Communist fanatics, Philby was an atheist. Lack of religion is replaced by quasi-religion:

in his talk Philby admitted to being a rebel from an early age, shocking his grandmother by announcing he did not believe in God and growing up with what he called a greater affinity for the poor than the previledged.

He said: “In the year 1929 I was enrolled at Cambridge University at the age of 17. I already had a deep emotional connection to the weak, poor and less priveliged compared to the strong, rich and arrogant. I began my rebellious nature at a very early age. I scandalised my grandmother by informing her there was no god.

“Early rejection of Christianity probably had something to do with my early rejection of the bourgeois state.”

I do believe Philby is telling the truth when he cites his “rebellious nature” and his atheism.

Philby’s Russian/Polish wife tells a different tale about his last years in Russia:

Kim Philby, the most successful of the Cambridge spies, tried to drink himself to death in Moscow because he was disillusioned with communism and tortured by his own failings, his last wife has said in an interview…

Rufina Pukhova, his Russian-Polish wife, said Philby struggled to control his drinking by downing only two glasses of cognac a night and then handing her the bottle to hide…

His habit was fuelled by his sorrow over what he saw around him, she added. “Kim believed in a just society and devoted his whole life to communism. And here he was struck by disappointment, brought to tears. He said, ‘Why do old people live so badly here? After all, they won the war.'”

Maybe if he’d spent a little more time in Moscow before taking up spying, he’d have learned more about the regime he was helping. I doubt it would have mattered, however. He would have just offered this familiar excuse:

“He saw people suffering too much,” but he consoled himself by arguing that “the ideals were right but the way they were carried out was wrong. The fault lay with the people in charge.”

Sound familiar?

The law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head once again

The New Neo Posted on by

Medicare for All! says Elizabeth Warren and de Blasio. End private medical insurance!

So, how might this work in the real world? Take a look:

More often than not, when a politician declares that the only thing preventing some particular plan from going into place is political will, it’s a sign that there are uncomfortable practical questions they would like to paper over. So it was when Warren explained her support for a single-payer health care in which the government takes over nearly all of the country’s health care financing…

As former Maryland Rep. John Delaney pointed out just a few moments later, Warren’s plan—which is to say Bernie Sanders’ plan—would probably result in a sharp contraction in the number of hospitals.

“If you go to every hospital in this country and you ask them one question,” Delaney said, “which is how would it have been for you last year if every one of your bills were paid at the Medicare rate? Every single hospital administrator said they would close. And the Medicare for All bill requires payments to stay at current Medicare rates. So to some extent, we’re supporting a bill that will have every hospital closing.”

It’s probably an overstatement to say that every single hospital would close. But Delaney is right that under a single-payer plan paying current Medicare rates, some, and perhaps lots, almost certainly would. And many of the hospitals that stayed open would likely shed staff and services.

Medicare pays far, far less than private rates, and the higher rates from private payers is part of what keeps hospitals afloat financially.

Of course, you can raise Medicare reimbursement rates. But then Medicare would become far far more expensive than projected. Politicians like to sweep math under the rug and pretend it’s all just a matter of do-goody willpower or the lack thereof. But in the real world, math dictates what services can be provided for a given amount of money.

The second Democratic debate

The New Neo Posted on by

Like most Americans, I didn’t watch it.

But I have read about it (like most Americans?), and the consensus in the press is that Kamala Harris was the winner. My guess is that, at this point, it matters but not all that much. Harris was already somewhat of an MSM darling, and the front runners were always going to be the group of people who have at least some national political standing: Biden, Warren, Harris, and maybe a few others. Will they also be the last ones standing?

The more important takeaway from last night is that Democrats—virtually all of them—seem dedicated to outdoing each other in the amount of free stuff they are determined to hand out to illegal immigrants. I can’t believe that’s a winner, but the voting public has surprised me before.

And Harris’s big moment apparently came when she was advocating for forced busing ordered by the feds. Is there some huge constituency favoring such a policy? If so, I’ve missed it.

But again, I don’t think most people are paying attention yet.

For some background, here is a long piece I wrote about forced busing. And here’s a discussion (not mine) of Harris’s position on busing in the debate last night. An excerpt:

Go ahead, Kamala, you brave truth teller, you survivor of segregated Berkeley discrimination. Tell all those Dem voters how busing is what America’s schools need to achieve the necessary diversity. Tell them how you’ll appoint judges who’ll overrule Milliken, allow states to mandate integration across districts.

Tell white working class voters the Dems still need in order to win, all those rich white progressives who purport to love people of color so long as some other school is being integrated, not theirs. Tell low income African Americans to forget about those charter schools they like so much, because your great integration plan means they’ll be unnecessary. Trumpet your plans to mandate school systems like San Francisco, where racial quotas determine where and how far each child will be sent away from home. While you’re at it, explain how this system resulted in far more segregation.

Go ahead and tell people that your plan will end segregation as the government sorts populations based on race, just like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 planned all along.

But best of all, go tell Asians all about your great plans. Tell all those parents at those 80, 90% Asian public schools you plan to yank half of the kids out and send them into the inner cities with all sorts of poor black and Hispanic kids. Go ahead and tell Asian immigrants that they can’t cluster and dominate in certain schools, tested or otherwise.

Much much more at the link.

A rabbit ear hat story

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday commenter “charles” wrote:

The closest I have ever come to knitting was to think those little “pussy cat ears” hats were cute.

That was before they became a political thing.

Now, I think they are downright ugly!

Well, I’ve got a story—not about pussy cat ears hats, but bunny ear hats. For little children.

Many many years ago I was visiting someone who lived in Costa Rica. Although I’d taken high school Spanish, my skills were incredibly rusty. And I’m very shy about speaking foreign languages anyway; it’s not my forte.

So I kept trying to find a moment to say something in Spanish, but I was too self-conscious. Finally, I saw what I thought was my opportunity.

There was a group of women in the neighborhood, and one was holding a little girl who had on a hat someone had knit which had little bunny ears. Very cute kid, cute hat. So I decided to say, “Gloriana looks like a rabbit.”

“Gloriana” was the child’s name.

Now, you might say that’s not much of a comment and not all that witty. But hey, it was my maiden voyage. I was just going to get my feet wet. And I was quite nervous.

So I screwed up my courage and said, “Gloriana se parece un conejo.”

At least, that’s what I meant to say. That what I intended to say.

But instead it came out like this: “Gloriana se parece un cojone.”

I was met with shocked stares, and realized what I had said. That was the last time I tried to speak Spanish.

SCOTUS rules on citizenship census question and political gerrymandering

The New Neo Posted on by

Several SCOTUS decisions came down today. I got somewhat of a late start, and have less time than I’d hoped to delve into them in any detail, so I’ll refer you to the following:

Court punts for now on the citizenship question:

From Legal Insurrection

From SCOTUSblog:

Holding: The secretary of the Department of Commerce did not violate the enumeration clause or the Census Act in deciding to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire, but the district court was warranted in remanding the case back to the agency where the evidence tells a story that does not match the secretary’s explanation for his decision.

There were a great many parts to this decision, with different concurring and dissenting justices. So it’s a bit difficult to sort out; read those two links if you’re interested in the details. But the gist of it seems to be that a citizenship question on the census would be okay if the motives for including it were pure rather than political.

If that’s a correct interpretation on my part, it seems to be a somewhat troubling extension of a recent tendency of quite a few courts lately to elevate motives over process.

This ruling also means that as a practical matter it would be difficult to get the question on the 2020 census even if the Court later rules in favor of it, because the forms must be printed soon.

I can also add, from having done some genealogy research using censuses, that this question was long a staple of census questionnaires.

One more big ruling today—actually, a potentially more influential one—from SCOTUS involved politically partisan gerrymandering. You can find some of the details here:

At SCOTUSblog:

The Supreme Court issued a decision today that could have a significant and long-term effect on elections and legislatures across the country. By a vote of 5-4, the justices ruled that courts should stay out of disputes over partisan gerrymandering – that is, allegations that redistricting maps were drawn to favor one political party at another’s expense. The practice of partisan gerrymandering may be distasteful, the court concluded, but it is a problem that politicians and the political process, rather than courts, should solve.

At Legal Insurrection:

The lower court cases are to be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction:

“The judgments of the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina and the United States District Court for the District of Maryland are vacated, and the cases are remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.”

This is a sweeping rejection well beyond what would have occurred with a substantive evaluation of partisan gerrymandering. There will be no wiggle room for district court judges to try to get involved somehow. For better or worse, partisan gerrymandering is subject to the partisan political process, not the sometimes seemingly partisan judicial process.

This isn’t just saying that SCOTUS can’t rule on the fairness of any particular case of political gerrymandering; it’s saying that district courts can’t rule on it.

And what about state appeals courts? Remember Pennsylvania? See this if you don’t. That ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court probably resulted in quite a few more Democrats being elected to the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania than would have otherwise been the case without court interference.

But the present SCOTUS ruling can’t go back and undo it. The present ruling applies to the cases it was ruling on today, and to future cases.

This SCOTUS ruling can cut either way, of course, in the political sense. Sometimes gerrymandering is done to favor Republicans, sometimes Democrats. It depends on who’s in control of the process at the time in a particular state.

But the courts won’t be able to have much say in the matter—at least, for political gerrymandering. I am pretty sure, however, that if it’s done to favor one race or another, rather than one party or another, the courts will still be able to be involved. And of course, race can be highly correlated with political affiliation, particularly for minorities.

Julian Castro gets the gold star for woke-ness effort

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I haven’t watched the debate. But I hear tell about it, and this sounds like one of the high points:

“I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom. I believe in reproductive justice,” Castro declared. “Just because a woman, or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise this right to choose.” He went on to pledge that he would appoint judges who would uphold Roe v. Wade (1973)…

While transgender activists would call for abortion access for transgender people, they would demand it for “transgender men,” not “transgender women.” It is impossible for a “transgender female” to get an abortion, unless he gets a womb transplant.

But some people felt that Castro shouldn’t be judged too harshly:

…[T]ransgender activist Charlotte Clymer was just happy to see the transgender community mentioned. “Julian Castro went out of his way to specifically mention trans people’s access to reproductive care and justice on national television, and I am definitely making a donation tonight,” Clymer tweeted.

Life imitates art. History repeats itself, first as farce, then as political debate. So I just had to post this video once again, because it fits the occasion so very perfectly:

Today is the 10th anniversary of FredHJr’s death

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly revised version of a post that has appeared previously on this blog.]

Unbelievable that it’s been an entire decade since commenter FredHJr died suddenly and tragically. As time passes, the number of readers here who don’t remember Fred must necessarily increase, so for those of you who don’t know who FredHJr was, please see this and this, as well as these.

Fred’s death was extremely tragic for his family. But it was tragic for this blog, too, because he was an invaluable and irreplaceable member of our community, a “changer” who knew a lot about the Left, and a keen observer of politics, history, religion, culture—of life itself. I still think about him often, wondering what he’d have to say about everything that’s happened in these last ten years.

Every year on the anniversary, I offer some excerpts from his many comments here. Continue reading →

Tonight’s the first Democratic debate

The New Neo Posted on by

Do you plan to watch?

UPDATE 10:39 PM:

I know, I know. I’m a blogger; I should force myself to watch it.

But I hate debates no matter which party. And a huge load of Democrats, circa 2019, trying to outdo each other—sort of like actors upstaging each other, but in this case they’re stage-lefting each other?

Sorry, I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it.

Survey of college students: they don’t feel they can voice dissenting opinions

The New Neo Posted on by

Gee, I wonder why:

The study, conducted by the Knight Foundation and College Pulse, found that 68 percent of U.S. college students say that “the climate on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.”…

In a June post, Gallup noted that it had surveyed graduates who had obtained their bachelor’s degree from 2013 to 2018 by asking them to respond to the following statement: “I felt very comfortable sharing ideas or opinions in class that were probably only held by a minority of people.”…

Sixty-four percent of grads surveyed indicated that they agreed with the statement, while only 14 percent suggested that they disagreed.

The numbers are huge, and it’s a majority of both men and women. Therefore it’s pretty clear that even many students who are politically liberal are feeling the pinch of self-censorship to avoid being singled out for SJW retaliation in some way, and that groupthink is a powerful force that thwarts even some liberals against their will.

That Gallup article mentioned in the quote is interesting. When I clicked on the link, I found to my surprise that it wasn’t a straight report of a poll. Instead, it was an article entitled, “Inclusive Environments Produce Attached Alumni.”

I’m not always up on the latest jargon, but these days doesn’t “inclusive” usually refer to minorities in terms of gender and ethnicity, and the suppression of diversity of opinion and in particular political point of view, in order to protect SJWs’ feelings from being hurt? But this is what the article says:

Tyler’s need to share his views with others matters greatly to him. He represents hundreds of thousands of college students nationally who require an inclusive campus to thrive. A recent Knight Foundation-Gallup study on free speech on college campuses found that 70% of U.S. college students say they want an open learning environment, where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing offensive speech. Similarly, a 2018 study conducted by the American Council on Education found that 98% of college presidents say promoting an inclusive society is extremely important (82%) or very important (16%).

I think we can safely say that those college presidents are using the definition of “inclusive” I gave above, because they certainly are not talking about making it safe for conservatives.

Here’s an example of the dueling definitions of “inclusive”:

Comfort sharing unpopular views varies by gender, with female grads less likely than their male peers to report feeling comfortable expressing opinions held by only a minority of students. This finding is consistent with prior research that shows women are less likely than men to ask questions during academic seminars. This gap in comfort with sharing opinions undermines the college experience given that research clearly shows students gain tremendously when they are exposed to ideas, perspectives and opinions from different genders or backgrounds.

“[I]deas, perspectives and opinions from different genders or backgrounds” is that first definition I mentioned. It’s also the perspective of “diversity” these days, which refers to minority groups rather than diversity of political philosophy.

But which definition of these words are the students using when they answer the questions? I suspect that a great many more of them are referring to diversity of thought and politics rather than diversity or inclusivity involving gender and race.

Diversity leads to conformity, at least as it is practiced on campus.

[NOTE: Please see this for a related discussion on dual definitions and their use.]

N. K. Jemison’s Utopia: breaking those eggs

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday commenter “huxley” wrote:

I just discovered there’s a new ultra-SJW-intersectional, black, female SF writer, N.K. Jemisin who has won three Hugos and a Nebula since 2016. That’s a very big deal. It puts her into grandmaster level with the likes of Heinlein.

I checked out her short story collection, “How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?” because it contained “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” which was a response to an all-time SF story and one that had a huge impact on me, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula Le Guin.

“Omelas” is about people who leave an almost-utopia which, however, requires the hideous suffering of a small child. “Stay and Fight” starts from an SJW utopia in an alternate universe, which is being corrupted by radios which can receive broadcasts from the US in our universe. The ones who stay and fight are those who dress in gray and ferret out those who have been corrupted by the Americans broadcasts and execute them with a pike for wrongthink.

Wow. That’s the new SJW science fiction. Here’s a real quote from the story:

“This is the paradox of tolerance, the treason of free speech: we hesitate to admit that some people are just fucking evil and need to be stopped.”

Jemisin is currently the hottest, most ballyhooed talent in science and this is one of her most important messages.

One might think Jemison’s “Stay and Fight” is a cautionary tale rather than a prescription. And I suppose that’s at least theoretically possible. Caveat: I have not yet read the story—in fact, last night was the first I’d heard of it. I haven’t read any science fiction in a long long time, although when I was young I read quite a bit of it.

However, reading this online interview with the author in Paris Review stopped me from further entertaining the notion that she meant her story to be cautionary rather than prescriptive.

I suppose I might change my mind if I were to actually read the story itself. But I doubt it, because Jemison seems quite clear in that interview about her intent. If Le Guin was saying that Utopian impulses are always built on the suffering of others and true Utopias are therefore not possible, Jemison is saying that the only thing that keeps us from Utopia is the will to create one, and that (to use an old metaphor) we have to be willing to break a ton of eggs to make that tasty omelet.

And I mean break (the quotes are from Jemison herself):

With Le Guin’s story, at the end of it, she’s suggesting that the only way to create a society that is a better place is to walk away from this one or to go off the grid. That’s not really what she’s saying, specifically, but that’s what a lot of people have concluded. But no, you’ve got to fix it, especially when there’s nowhere to walk away to. You go anywhere else in our current world and you’re either being completely exploited by capitalism or somewhat exploited by capitalism. So, I mean, it’s just a question of what kind of suffering you’re willing to put yourself though.

And the other thing is that I was trying to figure out what a society might be like if it was genuinely a good place, and I realized as I was trying to think of it—science-fiction writers are supposed to be able to come up with futures. All futures. But the one thing I could not imagine was a society stemming from our own that was truly inclusive, truly egalitarian, and truly good for all people. What a true utopian society was like.

That is the exercise that Le Guin is engaging in. Can you have a utopian society without somebody somewhere suffering? What would that life be like if no one suffered? And the only way that I could do it was to basically point out that the flaw is ideological. The idea that you have to have someone suffering is the flaw. So, this is a society that is utopian as long as they keep at bay the idea that somebody’s got to suffer. As long as they manage to fight off people who immediately assume that some people are less important than others and those people can be exploited. That is the danger. That is the toxicity. It’s not meant to be a society that’s perfect in every way. Obviously, people suffer in it. But the people who suffer are those who bring the contagion of suffering to others.

“Fight off” means “kill,” in this case, according to what I’ve read about the story. Kill everyone who thinks a completely egalitarian society is impossible.

And then by magic, it will be okay. Because the only enemy, really, is thoughtcrime. The only impediment to Utopia is the existence of people who don’t think Utopia is humanly possible.

That’s how I see this interview of Jemison’s, anyway. I just can’t think of any other interpretation.

The rest of the interview is hard to summarize, but one specific thing it contains is the common lefist fiction that capitalism is a “zero-sum game,” an idea which Jemison seems to attribute to the right rather than to the left. She says [emphasis mine]:

If you believe in the capitalistic idea of scarcity, if you believe in the capitalistic idea of zero sum, the idea that in order for a few to benefit, everybody else has to suffer, or for some to benefit, others have to suffer, maybe. But I don’t believe that has ever been the case. I think that we have enough resources on this planet for everyone. We have always had more than enough resources for everyone and we’re capable of thinking up ways to come up with more. People who write science fiction do tend to be utopian thinkers. We do tend to think that we can achieve great things as a species. We just have to be willing to acknowledge what needs to be done to get there and sometimes the things that need to be done to get there are terrifying or can be terrifying to those in a position of privilege.

So is her short story, then, a blueprint for action? Kill those who don’t agree with Jemison and the others who have the right Utopian ideas? Our inability to create a utopia is merely a failure of will plus a failure to get rid of those who would think otherwise?

I really cannot think of a better example of where human hubris plus ignorance can lead and actually has led. It it the totalitarian impulse pure and simple, the idea that killing those who disagree will create some sort of statist heaven on earth. Millions upon millions have died in this cause. It’s a solution that Le Guin rejected. Jemison appears to be openly embracing it. And she’s being lauded for it.

Hey, let’s super-incentivize coming here illegally

The New Neo Posted on by

Great idea, Bernie:

Bernie Sanders put it clearly: “We’re going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and open that to the undocumented.” In other words, if are a citizen of another country and you want a free college education, all you have to do is show up in the United States and get accepted at any one of the 1,626 public colleges in the United States.

Needless to say, if enacted, this would bring a flood of people from all around the world, eager to enjoy the benefits of a college degree, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. (In case you’re wondering, there are a handful of other countries in Europe that offer very low or nominal tuition rates to American students, but at most of those schools, competition for the limited slots is high.)

To Bernie and the Democrats of 2020, that influx would be a feature, not a bug. Another feature is that the enactment of such a proposal would give the federal government even more control over state public institutions than it already has.

And how would the money be raised? Do most of the people who plan to vote for Sanders consider that question? If they do, they can see what he says about that here:

Fully Paid for by Imposing a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street. This [proposed] legislation [would be] offset by imposing a Wall Street speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators of 0.5% on stock trades (50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives.It has been estimated that this provision could raise hundreds of billions a year which could be used not only to make tuition free at public colleges and universities in this country, it could also be used to create millions of jobs and rebuild the middle class of this country.

Evil Wall Street can take it, right? No problem.

If you would like to read a discussion of the possible consequences, go here. An excerpt:

Proponents claim the tax would collect tens of billions of dollars, discourage speculative and high-frequency trading, and make markets safer and less volatile. Its opponents say the revenue estimates are overstated and the tax will actually make markets more volatile…

Similar taxes have been advocated by many prominent economists over the years, including John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Stiglitz and Lawrence Summers. At least 40 countries currently or previously have had financial-transaction taxes of one sort or another…

The majority of the academic research into transaction taxes has reached similar findings: Taxes either have no effect on volatility or they increase volatility.

Why would markets become more volatile when financial transactions are taxed? When an activity is taxed, people tend to do less of it. So trading volumes decline–sometimes sharply. An IMF study found that trading volume invariably fell when transaction taxes were imposed…

When Sweden put in place a 1% tax on equity trades in 1983, the result was a 5.3% decline on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.

According to the IMF study, the impact on prices would depend on the average holding period for a particular asset class. So stocks that trade frequently would likely decline the most. Less frequently traded securities, like corporate bonds, would be expected to hold up better.

The economy, too, could suffer. When the European Commission looked at the issue, it found that a tax of 0.1% would reduce gross domestic product by 1.76% in the long run. That’s mainly because the tax raises the cost of capital, resulting in less investment and diminished economic output.

There are also questions about how much revenue the tax would raise. For starters, anything that makes stock prices drop sharply reduces how much the government collects in capital-gains taxes.

The issue of free tuition at public institutions—and how it would be paid for—is a separate one, of course, from whether to offer it to illegal immigrants (or, as they used to quaintly be called, illegal aliens).

For Sanders and his supporters, it’s a win-win situation. They would get to stick it to mean old Wall Street. They would get more illegal immigrants (and ultimately, voters). They are wooing anyone who wants the free stuff of a paid-for college education. The liberals and leftists who completely dominate colleges and universities would get guaranteed federal support for their further indoctrination of entire generations to come. And the feds would get more and more control over state institutions.

What could possibly go wrong?

I’m picking on Sanders here, but one could look at any of the candidates and see that their proposals for this election are far more to the left than anything we’ve previously seen from candidates running for the nomination of a major party. They believe their time has come.