2016 has been an amazing founding year for the Rational Standard. Here are the top 20 articles out of the nearly 400 that were published this year. These were written by 14 different authors, from all across South Africa, with their insights into the political, economical and social issues of our world.
Have a look at the list below in case you missed any of them.
20. Issues of social justice: why #ZumaMustFall is the bane of white allies
Written by: Nic Haussamer
“One of the logical implications of the social justice philosophy, therefore, is that if one or a few members of a given group commit a wrongful act, the entire group is complicit. This explains why, today, all white people are held responsible for slavery and colonialism in the distant past, and why young whites are held responsible for the Apartheid regime that preceded them.”
19. Pride Goeth Before Destruction, And A Haughty Spirit Before Fallism
Written by: Hermann Pretorius
“The idea has taken hold among the fallists and broader society, that ‘western’ civilization is somehow a single entity – a hive mind with one religion, one school of thought, one level of melanin, one pursuit, one identity, one evil, colonial instinct; a perverse and cruel simunye.”
18. People’s War and its impact on the past, the present, and the future
Written by: Dr Anthea Jeffery
“We cannot expect to see into the future, but we need at least to understand a key part of the country’s recent past: the people’s war, which ANC propaganda has largely hidden from our view. Only on this basis can we begin to understand developments since 1994 and the current complex swirl of events.”
17. The Meltdown: Why Hillary Clinton Lost
Written by: Nicholas Babaya
“Ultimately, Trump’s success was the result of a culture of dishonest demonisation. For too long people had been called all sorts of horrible titles and had created a culture of responding with uncomfortable truths, not with reason or logic, but rather political correctness.”
16. Whose land is it anyway?
Written by: Nicholas Woode-Smith
“Land reform needs to ignore the collectivistic perspective and approach the matter purely from an individualistic point of view. Individuals own and use land – not nebulous groups. The current approach risks either ignoring history or having to abandon the goal through an inability to determine the true owner.”
15. A lesson in economics from MMORPGs
Written by: Nic Haussamer
“As stated at the outset, the economics of online gaming can be fascinating to observe. We’ve seen how in-game economies sometimes resemble, and in other ways differ from, the real-world economy. There is certainly much to be observed and learned about economics just from playing such games…”
14. Free Speech: A Vanishing Right
Written by: Mark Oppenheimer
“I told him that we were both human beings and not representatives of our races. One on one, we were able to converse freely. We didn’t agree with each other, but I cherished the freedom to exchange our views.”
13. The Fallacy of “Cultural Appropriation”
Written by: Jonathan Patrick Bonging Geach
“All of this is because culture is by its very nature uncontainable. It’s a constantly flowing and changing social force, and an identity which evolves with the times. Every single culture on Earth stems from a previous culture.”
12. Eusebius McKaiser and the ‘Logic’ of Intersectionality
Written by: Anthony Stuurman
“Now, a caveat must be noted. Just because this rape culture exists, does not mean that all men ascribe to it or commit rape. Far from it: the vast majority of black men are horrified by the act.”
11. The Objective Absurdity of Decolonizing Science
Written by: Daniël Eloff
“To say that science is wholly the product of Western modernity is not only a blatant lie, but it gravely neglects to give recognition to the scientific contributions that have been made by other civilizations throughout the world and throughout history.”
10. “Capitalists don’t care about the poor!” Actually, We Care About Them A Lot More Than You Do.
Written by: Nicholas Babaya
“So while the leftist wants more regulations and claims to champions workers’ rights, the only rights they are championing are those of the lucky few who have managed to get a job in their regulated, business-unfriendly economy. The Left is either deluded when it comes to economics, or they simply don’t care to see what benefit a free-market would have to the poor.”
9. Keynesian vs Austrian Economics: Infographic
Written by: Christiaan van Huysteen
“The economy will not be able to develop harmoniously and smoothly unless all artificial measures that interfere with the level of prices, wages, and interest rates, as determined by the free play of economic forces, are renounced once and for all.”
8. My ‘lived experience’: When indoctrination replaces education
Written by: Frederik van Dyk
“The moment that opinions are forced in such an aggressive and unqualified way, especially when no counter arguments are provided for the sake of balance, we can never accept the situation as having educational value.”
7. Commentary on Some Myths of White Privilege
Written by: Martin van Staden
“I have long acknowledged that white individuals do have undeserved social privilege in various circumstances, bearing in mind that ‘privilege’ is circumstantial, and not a blanket truth like the left tries to construe it.”
6. The Market Evisceration of RhodesMustFall
Written by: Roman Cabanac
“There is no Great War, there are no concentration camps, there is no nuclear fallout. We live in relative peace and prosperity so the big issues are gender pronouns, statues, bathrooms for trans people, fat shaming and ‘decolonization’. Your tone of voice is a ‘microaggression’, fictional books have ‘trigger warnings’, Beyoncé is the new Martin Luther King.”
5. South Africa Needs Guns, Loads of Them
Written by: Martin van Staden
“The fact of the matter is that a firearm is a tool. It is a tool which has been used for the greatest evil and has been used for the greatest good, wielded by civilians, law enforcers and soldiers.”
4. Doekgate: Keep Calm and Think
Written by: Martin van Staden
“Next time anything of note happens, be sure to ask ‘is this private or public property?’ before you get outraged. Leftists would call this a false dichotomy, or say ‘the lines between these kinds of property are blurred’. Rest assured, they are not.”
3. Protesting For Fun
Written by: Nicholas Woode-Smith
“Perhaps it is actually more comforting to view the protest groups as merely bored, lonely young adults. Illogic is hard to understand, as there is nothing to understand. Selfish individuals are something we’re a bit more used to. Unfortunately, history shows us that ideologues do have the power to shift ideas in such a way that typically rational agents will spout nonsense and believe it as doctrine.”
2. South Africa Blind-sided
Written by: Nicholas Woode-Smith
“Due to our blindness, we have more problems to deal with. We have to continue to defend the economy in whatever way we can (or just run for it), we have to continue to condemn the nuclear deal (for all the good that will do) and we have to fight not only legislators but the idiotic masses who are baying for blood.”
1. A Rage Against the Eternal ‘Victim’ Status
Written by: Malusi Ndwandwe
“My message to the liberty-loving community is to tread carefully around race-baiters, but don’t be afraid to take them on. A counter-narrative is essential considering past incidents and how race-baiters are unashamedly doing their ‘baiting’ in the mainstream media. It’s hard to take on a race-baiter using objective logic, since they aren’t bothered by it, and have instead developed their own parallel ‘logic’.”
Compiled by Daniël Eloff.
In this article
