ThoughtSlime digs into it, and would you believe he uses the very same sources Rufo cites, and shows that Rufo misrepresented/lied about those sources, over and over again? Sure you would.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m at work so the video is blocked. I assume it’s about CRT?
@1 Akira: It’s actually aimed at the homeless. I guess Rufo felt like doing something different.
It’s about “solving” homelessness (Spoiler: it doesn’t.)
Well, it is a PragerU video, they do have certain standards of behaviour and content that they are required to adhere to, so that sort of thing should be expected.
@ 2
Oh, that should be horrifying.
What worries me isn’t that they don’t have a solution, it’s that you KNOW they do. They don’t mention it, but they always has a final solution in the back of their minds.
Erlend Meyer:
Speaking as an ex-conservative, I can assure you that the solution tossed around by the talk-radio shows and right-wing journals of my youth comes straight from the poison pen of Malthus himself: Let them starve. Denying the homeless benefits will goad them into joining the workforce. Those who don’t make it? Meh, they were useless, so no loss.
Oh! You’re probably asking yourself, how can you think such things? Well, it’s pretty easy when you spent a large portion of your life hearing how various marginalized groups are evil and threats to your existence. LGBTQIA folks? Sexual perverts out to rape children. Atheists? Filthy hedonists and communists out to take away people’s religion! Homeless people? Lazy bums looking to mooch your hard earned money and blow it on drugs and booze!
You get the idea.
I think one of the more damaging things to happen to this bullshit is a series of pics and moan contests, including a couple of court cases against “Homeless Jesus” statues hosted by local churches.
I think this is actually a rationalization.
I was reading Barbara Tuchman’s book on the 14th century, and she notes that having contempt for and and hating the peasants was part of the culture of the nobles. The peasantry was there to be exploited (= stolen from), and then despised and mocked and tormented, raped, and killed to the noble’s hearts’ content. Like James Potter’s defense of bullying Snape, “it’s because they exist.”
I think this is the same thing. I think what motivates conservatives, at least in the USA, is a need to hate someone (cf. a certain former FtB blogger) and basically any class of people other than your own is fair game. Immigrants, poor people, black people, disabled people, intelligent people :-) Which group you’re targetting isn’t all that important. They are happy to pile on against whatever the target of the month is. The important thing is to have someone to hate.
Akira McKenzie@7–
There are many criticisms that can be levelled against Malthus, but the idea that he supported a Social Darwinist model of economics is not true. Even his wrong arguments (e.g. his support of the Corn Laws which he thought would stimulate British agriculture to become self-sufficient), were founded on the principles of reducing poverty and improving the living standards of the poor. His core argument was that population growth always outstrips resource production in the long run, which leads to economic contraction and famine, which is inevitably harder on the poor and working class — and which he wanted to avoid by limiting population growth (and not by killing people or letting them die).
We can look through his work and see the many mistakes he made, and it’s fair to point out that his population-control message leaned very heavily on imposiing “virtuous” standards on the working class (i.e. delayed marriage, voluntary celibacy) and only the working class, while his religious views made him adamantly opposed to contraception. But he most certainly was not from the “let the weak starve” school of economic theory.