1/x. Far be it from me to disagree with the great Rex Murphey. But I have a tiny quibble with this article. He assumes that the "wokesters" are being silly in objecting to calling the great composers by their last names only. They are, but . . . https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-wokeism-has-become-a-feeble-cartoon-of-pseudo-thought

2/x. . . . they are not JUST being silly. Their silliness has a deadly purpose. They mean to say that Mozart, Bach, etc. are not really, objectively, greater than other composers (esp. women & POC). They mean that the recognition of their genius is racist.

3/x. Is it even a point about how great their music is? No, it is a point about how the recognition of excellence in any field must be stopped in the name of anti-racism. Why? B/c that destabilizes standards of beauty. Why do that? B/c it promotes the abstract idea of 'equity'.

4/x. What they want is for the textbooks to recognize equal numbers of male & female, white & coloured, composers as great. But, you say, that would be to confuse mediocracy & genius. It would erode our ability to discern excellence. It would re-write history.

5/x. You might see these things as undesirable, but they do not. For them all of life - the entirety of human experience, art, culture, sc, rel. - everything is nothing but an eternal struggle of wills, i.e. politics. Nothing but the Revolution; nothing outside the Revolution.

6/x. Such people cannot be reasoned with. They are technically "barbarians" - i.e. those who despise reason & worship power. All civilizations in human history have confronted such people. There are only 2 choices: allow them to destroy your civilization or fight back.

7/x. Old, tired civilizations that have lost the will to exist except on the momentum generated by past generations are susceptible to the barbarians like a tired body with a weakened immune system. This is how civilizations crumble. They lose the will to resist & succumb.

8/8. We are watching the collapse of a old, rich, jaded, & exhausted civilization in real time. Civ. has many enemies, but one in terminal decline actually breeds them from within itself. The external ones are never strong enough to destroy it. The dangerous rot is within itself.